Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Outsourcing at the drive-thru

Image hosting by Photobucket

"While the call-center idea has received some attention since a scattered sampling of McDonald's franchises began testing it 18 months ago, most customers are still in the dark. For Meredith Mejia, a regular at a McDonald's in Pleasant Hill, Calif., near San Francisco, it meant that her lunch came with a small helping of the surreal. When told that she had just ordered her double cheeseburger and small fries from a call center 250 miles away, she said the concept was 'bizarre.'

"McDonald's is joined by the owner of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., CKE Restaurants, which plans to deploy a similar system later this year in restaurants in California.

"Not everyone is sold on the idea. Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy's Restaurants, said that the approach had not yet proved itself to be cost-effective. 'Speed is incredibly important,' he said, but 'we haven't given this solution any serious thought.'"