Analyzing a Taco Bell Restaurant

The following scenario was written by a reporter who became a Taco Bell worker for a few hours to
experience what it's like to work at one of the most high-tech quick-serve restaurant chains in the
world. As you read, visualize how you could analyze a Taco Bell using the queuing models that we
discussed in this chapter. After the scenario, we will give you some hints related to how you can
model the Quick Service (QS) restaurant and then ask a series of questions related to your model.

It must always be, "Hi, how are you today?" Never, "Hi, how are you?" "Hi, how's it going?" or
"Welcome to Taco Bell." Never, "What will it be today?" or, even worse, "What do you want?" Every
Taco Bell Service Champion memorizes the order script before his first shift. The folks who work the
drive-thru windows at the Taco Bell here in Tustin, California, about 35 miles south of Los Angeles,
and everywhere else, are called Service Champions. Those who work the food production line are
called Food Champions.

You think you know it—"Hi, how are you today?" It seems easy enough. And you follow that with,
"You can order when you're ready," never "Can I take your order?" The latter puts pressure on the
driver, who might be a distracted teenager busy texting her friend or a soccer mom with a half-dozen
kids in the van. "They don't need the additional pressure of a disembodied voice demanding to know
their order," explains Mike Harkins. Harkins, 49, is vice-president of One System Operations for Taco
Bell, which means he spends all day, every day, thinking about the kitchen and the drive-thru.

He has been prepping me for my debut at the window. Getting ready, I wash my hands,
scrubbing for the mandated 20 seconds; slide on rubber gloves; and don the three-channel headset
that connects me to the ordering station out in the lot, as well as to my fellow Champions. I take my
place at the window. I hear the ding indicating a customer has pulled into the loop around the
restaurant, and I immediately ask, "Hi, how’s it going?"

It gets worse from there. As a Service Champion, my job is to say my lines, input the order into
the proprietary point of sale (POS) system, prepare and make drinks like Limeade Sparklers and
Frutista Freezes, collect bills or credit cards, and make change. I input Beefy Crunch Burritos, Volcano
Burritos, Chalupas, and Gorditas. My biggest worry is that someone will order a Crunchwrap
Supreme, a fast-food marvel made up of two kinds of tortillas, beef, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and
sauces, all scooped, folded, and assembled into a handheld, multiple-food-group package, which
then gets grilled for 27 seconds. This actually doubles the time it takes to prepare a normal order. An
order for a Crunchwrap Supreme, the most complex item on the menu, sometimes requires the
Service Champion to take up a position on the food production line to complete it in anything like the
164 seconds that Taco Bell averages for each customer, from driving up to the ordering station to
pulling away from the pick-up window.

Above me on the wall, a flat-screen display shows the average time of the last five cars at either
the order station or the pick-up window, depending on which is slowest. If the number is red, as it is
now, that means one, or both, of the waits is exceeding 50 seconds, the target during peak periods. It
now shows 53 seconds, on its way to 60, 70... and then I stop looking. The high-pitched ding that
announces each new customer becomes steady, unrelenting, and dispiriting—85 cars will roll
through over the peak lunch rush. And I keep blowing the order script.

I fall behind so quickly and completely that restaurant manager Amanda Mihal, a veteran of 12
years in the QSR business (Quick Serve Restaurant, the acronym for an industry that makes acronyms
for everything), has to step in. "You’ll get it," Amanda says as she fixes an order that I have managed
to screw up. "Eventually." Every Taco Bell has two food production lines, one dedicated to the
drive-thru and the other to servicing the walk-up counter. Working those lines is no easier than
wearing the headset. The back of the restaurant has been engineered so that the Steamers, Stuffers,
and Expeditors, the names given to the Food Champions who work the pans, take as few footsteps as
possible during a shift. There are three prep areas: the hot holding area, the cold holding area, and
the wrapping expediting area. The Stuffer in the hot holding area stuffs the meat into the tortillas,
ladling beef with Taco Bell's proprietary tool, the BPT, or beef portioning tool. The steps for scooping
the beef have been broken down into another acronym, SST, for stir, scoop, and tap. Flour tortillas
must be cooked on one side for 15 seconds and the other for five.

When I take my place on the line and start to prepare burritos, tacos, and chalupas—they won't
let me near a Crunchwrap Supreme—it is immediately clear that this has been engineered to make
the process as simple as possible. The real challenge is the wrapping. Taco Bell once had 13 different
wrappers for its products. That has been cut to six by labeling the corners of each wrapper
differently. The paper, designed to slide off a stack in single sheets, has to be angled with the name
of the item being made at the upper corner. The tortilla is placed in the middle of the paper and the
item assembled from there until you fold the whole thing up in the wrapping expediting area next to
the grill. "We had so many wrappers before, half a dozen stickers; it was all costing us seconds," says
Harkins. In repeated attempts, I never get the proper item name into the proper place. And my
burritos just do not hold together.

With me on the line are Carmen Franco, 60, and Ricardo Alvarez, 36. The best Food Champions
can prepare about 100 burritos, tacos, chalupas, and gorditas in less than half an hour, and they have
the 78-item menu memorized. Franco and Alvarez are a precise and frighteningly fast team. Ten
orders at a time are displayed on a screen above the line, five drive-thrus and five walk-ins. Franco is
a blur of motion as she slips out wrapping paper and tortillas, stirs, scoops, and taps, then slides the
items down the line while looking up at the screen. The top Food Champions have an ability to scan
through the next five orders and identify those that require more preparation steps, such as Grilled
Stuffed Burritos and Crunchwrap Supremes, and set those up before returning to simpler tacos and
burritos. When Alvarez is bogged down, Franco slips around him, and slides Crunchwrap Supremes
into their boxes.

At the drive-thru window in Tustin, I would have shaken off the headset many orders ago had it
not been for manager Mihal's support, but I'm hanging in there. After a while, I do begin to detect a
pleasing, steady rhythm to the system, the transaction, the delivery of the food. Each is a discrete,
predictable, scripted interaction. When the order is input correctly, the customer drives up to the
window, the money is paid, the Frutista Freeze or Atomic Bacon Bombers (a test item specific to this
Taco Bell) handed over, and you send people on their way with a smile and a "Thank you for coming
to Taco Bell," you feel a moment of accomplishment. And so does Harkins, for it has all gone exactly
as he has planned.

Then a ding in my headset.

"Um, hello?"

Idiot, I think to myself, I’ve blown the script again.

Modeling the Restaurant

In the scenario, they indicate that it takes about 164 seconds on average to serve a customer during
the busy lunch hour period. Put yourself in the seat of your car getting food at the FS restaurant. Let's
assume you are using the drive-thru window and that you will pick up the food and take it home to
eat with some friends.

You drive into the restaurant lot and notice there is a line of cars that has formed at the order
kiosk. You wait for your turn to talk to the Customer Service Champion so that you can place your
order. The menu is sitting there in clear view, so you can see exactly what you want. Soon it is your
turn and you quickly place your order, learn what the bill will be, and move your car to the line at the
drive-thru window. While waiting, you get your money out and count out the exact change you will
need. After a short time, it's your turn at the window and you give the Service Champion your
money, take your drink and food, and carefully drive out of the parking lot.

Think about what happened at the restaurant. First, you waited in two lines. The first was at the
order kiosk and the second at the drive-thru window. Next, consider the work that the restaurant
needed to complete to process your order. The Service Champion took your order and entered it in
the POS system, prepared your drink, and then when the food was ready, collected your money, and
delivered your drink and food. One of the Food Champions prepared your food using information
from a screen that shows orders as they are entered by the Service Champion.

The total time that it takes between when you arrive at the restaurant until you leave is made up
of the following elements:

1. The service time for the Service Champion to process your order

2. The service time for the Food Champion to prepare your order

3. The waiting while the Service Champion and Food Champion served other customers

To model this using the queuing models in the chapter assume that you have two totally
independent service processes. The first process is the Service Champion and the second is the Food
Champion. Each process has potentially a different mean service time per customer. The Service
Champion must serve each customer and they arrive at a particular rate. The Food Champion
prepares the individual items on the order such as a burrito, taco, chalupa, or gorditas taco. As the
orders are taken, each individual item appears on a monitor telling the Food Champion what should
be made next. The average time for a customer to run through the system is the sum of the average
service times (time to take the order by the Service Champion and time to make the order by the
Food Champion) plus the sum of the expected waiting times for the two processes. This assumes that
these processes operate totally independent of each other, which might not be exactly true. But we
leave that to a later discussion.

Assume that the queues in front of each process are large, meaning that there is plenty of room
for cars in the line before and after the order kiosk. Also, assume there is a single Service Champion
and two Food Champions each operating independently and working just on the drive-thru orders.
Also, assume that the arrival pattern is Poisson, customers are handled first-come-first-served, and
the service pattern is exponential.

1.

Consider a base case where a customer arrives every 43 seconds and the Customer Service
Champion can handle 130 customers per hour. There are two Food Champions, each capable of
handling 100 orders per hour.

On average, how many cars do you expect to have waiting in the drive-thru line? (Include those
waiting to place orders and those waiting for food.) On average, how many cars total would you
expect to be in the entire drive-thru system? (Include those waiting and those being served.) Use
Exhibit_10.9. (Do not round intermediate calculations. Round "Lq" value and final answers to 4
decimal places.)

Average total customers waiting in line______________

Average number of customers in the system______________

2.

Assume that the queues in front of each process are large, meaning that there is plenty of room for
cars in the line before and after the order kiosk. Also, assume there is a single Service Champion
and two Food Champions each operating independently and working just on the drive-thru orders.
Also, assume that the arrival pattern is Poisson, customers are handled first-come-first-served, and
the service pattern is exponential.
Consider a base case where a customer arrives every 55 seconds and the Customer Service
Champion can handle 95 customers per hour. There are two Food Champions, each capable of
handling 90 orders per hour. Use Exhibit_10.9.

a.

If the restaurant runs a sale and the customer arrival rate increases by 25%, calculate the total time
expected to serve a customer? (Do not round intermediate calculations. Round "Lq" value and final
answer to 4 decimal places.)

Average total time__________________ minutes

b.

Calculate the average number of cars in the drive-thru line? (Do not round intermediate
calculations. Round "Lq" value and final answer to 4 decimal places.)

Average number of cars

3.

Consider a base case where a customer arrives every 45 seconds and the Customer Service
Champion can handle 120 customers per hour. There are two Food Champions, each capable of
handling 115 orders per hour.

Currently, relatively few customers (less than ½ percent) order the Crunchwrap Supreme. What
would happen if the restaurant ran a sale on Crunchwrap Supremes, so that the customer arrival
rate increased by 15%, and 15% of the orders were now for this item? Use Exhibit_10.9. (Do not
round intermediate calculations. Round "Lq" value and final answers to 4 decimal places.)

Average total number of cars in the drive-thru ___________________

Average total customer time in the drive-thru____________________ minutes

4.
If the average time between customer arrivals is 3.75 minutes, what is the hourly arrival rate? (Round
your answer to 1 decimal place.)

Hourly arrival rate_____________ customers per hour

5
How much time on average would a server need to spend on a
customer to achieve a service rate of 45 customers per hour? (Round
your answer to 2 decimal places.)

Average service
minutes
time

6.
A finite population in waiting line management refers to a population that is large enough in
relation to the service system so that the change in population size caused by subtractions or
additions to the population does not significantly affect the system probabilities.
o True
o False

7.
In a practical sense, an infinite queue is one that includes every possible member of the served
population.
o True
o False

8.
The term "queue discipline" involves the art of controlling surly and unruly customers who have
become irritated by waiting.
o True
o False

9.

In a department 25 machines are kept running by three operators who respond to randomly
occurring equipment problems. An analyst who wanted to know how much production was being
lost by machines waiting for service could use queuing theory analysis to find out.

o True
o False

10.
In a department 25 machines are kept running by three operators who respond to randomly
occurring equipment problems. When an operator is not immediately available for servicing a
machine having a problem, the amount of production being lost by machines waiting for service
increases. An analyst can use queuing theory analysis to determine whether to pay overtime to
get an operator from a different shift or not.

o True
o False

11.

In a department, 25 machines are kept running by three operators who respond to randomly
occurring equipment problems. An analyst wanting to know whether to add a fourth operator or
downsize to two operators would be helped by using queuing theory analysis.

o True
o False

12.

The more time, money, and effort you spend developing a simulation model, the more likely you
are to achieve useful results.

o True
o False

13.

While spreadsheets can be somewhat useful for a variety of simulation problems, they can be
confusing and are vulnerable to several drawbacks, including weak routines for random-number
selection.

o True
o False

14.

Which of the following is a suggestion for managing queues that is mentioned in the textbook?

o Put up a serpentine lane to keep people from jumping ahead in line.

o Use humor to defuse a potentially irritating situation.
o Segment the customers.
o Assure customers that the wait is fair, and inform them of the queue discipline.
o Tell people in the queue that each will be served as soon as possible.

15.

Which of the following is not a suggestion for managing queues presented in the textbook?

o Try to divert your customer's attention when waiting.

 o Segment the customers.
o Encourage customers to come during the slack periods.
o Train your people to be friendly.
o Periodically close the service channel to temporarily disperse the line.

16.

Which of the following are the three major components of a queuing system?

o The source population, how customers exit the system, and the queuing discipline
o The number of servers, the service speed, and the waiting line
o The source population, how the customer exits the system, and the servicing system
o The source population and the way customers arrive at the system, the serving systems, and
how customers exit the system
o The service speed, the queue discipline, and the waiting line

17.

Which of the following is a suggestion for managing queues that is mentioned in the textbook?

o Put up a serpentine lane to keep people from jumping ahead in line.

o Use humor to defuse a potentially irritating situation.
o Train your servers to be friendly.
o Assure customers that the wait is fair, and inform them of the queue discipline.
o Tell people in the queue that each will be served as soon as possible.

18.

In essence, a queuing system includes several major components. Which of the following is not one
of them?

o Source population
o Servicing system
o How the customer exits the system
o The queue discipline
o None of these

19.

Which of the following is not a queue discipline discussed in the textbook?

o First come, first served

o Last in, first out
o Limited needs
o Shortest processing time
o Best customer first
20.

Buying a ticket for a college football game where there are multiple windows at which to buy the
ticket features which type of queuing system line structure?

o Single channel, single phase

o Single channel, multiphase
o Multichannel, single phase
o Multichannel, multiphase
o None of these

21.

Buying food at a large food store with multiple checkout counters features which type of queuing
system line structure?

o Single channel, single phase

o Single channel, multiphase
o Multichannel, single phase
o Multichannel, multiphase
o None of these

22.

Getting an autograph from a famous person might involve standing in which type of queuing line
structure?

o Single channel, single phase

o Single channel, multiphase
o Multichannel, single phase
o Multichannel, multiphase
o None of these

23.

In a college registration process, several department heads have to approve an individual student's
semester course load. What is the queuing system line structure?

o Single channel, single phase

o Single channel, multiphase
o Multichannel, single phase
o Multichannel, multiphase
o None of these
24.

Standing in line to buy a ticket for a movie where there are multiple windows at which to buy tickets
is which type of queuing system line structure?

o Single channel, single phase

o Single channel, multiphase
o Multichannel, single phase
o Multichannel, multiphase
o None of these

25.

Machine breakdown and repair in a 12-machine factory having one repair mechanic would develop
which type of queuing system line structure concerning machine breakdowns?

o Single channel, single phase

o Single channel, multiphase
o Multichannel, single phase
o Multichannel, multiphase
o None of these

26.

Machine breakdown and repair in a 12-machine factory having three repair mechanics would
develop which type of queuing system line structure concerning machine breakdowns?

o Single channel, single phase

o Single channel, multiphase
o Multichannel, single phase
o Multichannel, multiphase
o None of these

27.

Assume the service rate for a queue in a truck-loading operation is 2 trucks per hour. Using the
infinite queuing notion for the models presented in the textbook, which of the following is the
average service time?

o 2 hours
o 1 hour
o 0.5 hour
o 0.25 hour
o None of these

28.
For an infinite queuing situation, if the arrival rate for loading trucks is 5 trucks per hour, what is the
mean time between arrivals?

o 5 hours
o 2.5 hours
o 0.2 hour
o 0.1 hour
o None of these

29.

A company is concerned about the number of customers who have to wait for service in its customer
service department. Assume the rate at which customers are serviced is 12 per hour. Using the
infinite queuing notion for the models presented in the textbook, which of the following is the mean
time between arrivals?

o 12 minutes
o 6 minutes
o 2 minutes
o 1 minute
o None of these

30.

The demand on a hospital's emergency medical services is considered an uncontrollable arrival

pattern of the calling population.

o True
o False