The Fast Food Restaurant With The Quickest Drive-Thru
As a country that loves fast food we may hunt down the best combo deal, or debate which fast food spot has the best chicken sandwich, but when you look for what we really want from our drive-thrus, it's right there in the name. Of course we want our fast food to be tasty, and ideally affordable too, but its primary purpose is convenience. We all know our McDonald's burger probably isn't the best one in town, and we know we could save even more money if we cooked at home, but sometimes you just need a break from cooking and no one wants to wait an hour and pay out the ear for delivery. So, if time is the biggest concern, where do you go? In a country overrun with fast food options, which one is actually going to get us back on the road with our order the quickest? Well, we hope you like fast food tacos.
According to the 2023 Annual Drive-Thru Study compiled by Intouch Insight, Taco Bell topped competitors like McDonald's, KFC, and Chick-fil-A for the fastest drive-thru service in America. The popular Tex-Mex chain finished first in both how long it takes to order and total time spent in the drive thru, with the average service taking only 279 seconds. That was almost 30 seconds faster than the runners-up, Carl's Jr. and KFC, which nearly tied for second at 303.74 and 303.95 seconds respectively.
Taco Bell is the chain that will get you your food fastest, but not the most accurately
The fast food chain with the slowest drive-thru came as a bit of a surprise, but shows how multiple factors can influence the speed of service. Last place was Chick-fil-A, at 436 seconds on average, more than two and a half minutes longer than Taco Bell. Anyone who has ordered at a Chick-fil-A drive-thru knows how organized the company is, but the chain was undone by another factor fans are all too familiar with: how long the lines get. A second measure called "Fastest Total Time by Car" adjusts the results based on how many cars are in line on average, and Chick-fil-A actually had the fastest service when divided by the number of cars. It's a case of a chain's service being hurt by its own popularity. Still, Taco Bell was no slouch in popularity, coming in fourth in average number of cars, so its speed isn't just due to short lines.
One area where Taco Bell did falter a bit was in order accuracy. Chick-fil-A took the top spot here, while Taco Bell fell in the bottom half behind Burger King, McDonald's, KFC, and Wendy's. That's not quite as bad as the least accurate chains of Arby's, Hardee's, and Dunkin' — those chains only got orders right about 82% of the time. So go ahead and prioritize speed at the drive-thru, but always make sure to double check your order before you speed off home.