Yes, Pal's is in the fast food business (primarily drive-thru) but they redefine what fast can be.
On average, their customers get their food in 35 SECONDS. That includes the entire process: ordering, pulling up, paying, getting food, driving off. It's called the "bumper-to-bumper" time in the industry.
What's the second-fastest chain? Taco Bell. Average bumper-to-bumper time? 256 seconds. That's right, Pal's is 7 TIMES FASTER than their closest competitor.
So Pal's isn't just trying to be a little faster, they put speed at the center of everything they do. That delights customers, and therefore allows them to dramatically out-perform competitors.
Average revenue per square foot: Pal's $2,500. McDonald's $600.
When I talk about speed and responsiveness on stage, I'm often met with this objection:
"Jay, yes we can get faster in our company. We understand what you're saying about Time = Money. But if we focus on speed, our quality will go down, and we'll actually disappoint customers instead of delighting them."
You've probably heard the maxim: Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick Any Two. Most of us believe it to be true.
But it doesn't HAVE to be true.
Of course, it isn't EASY to be both fast and good. If it were easy, you'd already be doing it. If it were easy, your competitors would already be doing it. If it were easy, you couldn't seize and sustain an advantage by being both fast and good.
The difficulty is what makes it worth doing.
Look at Pal's.
Clearly the fastest.
But also....the best.
The average across all quick service restaurants is one mistake in drive-thru every 15 cars. At Pal's it's one mistake every
3,200 cars!
How? They've build the enterprise around delighting customers with speed and accuracy. Face-to-face ordering (no speakers), to
eliminate misunderstandings. Limited menu. And an incredible training program.
Each Pal's team member undergoes 120 hours of training before they
ever work a shift.
When I worked at McDonald's (my first job, in 1984) it felt like training was about 15 minutes, total.
To increase revenue and profits you need to keep your customers coming back and get them to tell their friends.
Being more responsive that they expect is one of the very best ways to do so, because all of us care about time (and how we spend it) more than we did even a few years ago.
But you can't just try to take your existing processes and make them a tiny bit better. You need to reexamine how you interact internally and externally and
redesign where needed to get faster (and better).
If you haven't started down this path, I very much suggest you do so at the beginning of the year.
Many, many organizations are starting to embrace this concept of winning with responsiveness.
I hope you'll join Pal's (and other businesses)
that believe you CAN be both fast and good.
