The pandemic made the drive-thru an essential part of keeping quick service restaurants open during lockdowns. Additionally, the past twenty months shined a spotlight on the importance of state-of-the-art drive-thru technology solutions to create a process as efficient and profitable as possible. What is the next gen drive-thru? Beyond Technology discovered the answers when Host James Kent chatted with Chloe Bisiaux, head of drive-thru products at Acrelec.
“During COVID, there were changes in what was happening in drive-thru, and they had to improve in operations, how they work, but also improve the customization to the customer and personalization,” Bisiaux said.
Acrelec created a next-generation product suite to solve the issues of needing customizable options while still reducing wait times.
“In the last few years, we’ve built up this drive-thru ecosystem,” Bisiaux said. “What it brings is four products. The first one is called Drive ID. This is for customer identification in the drive-thru. As the customer comes through the drive-thru, they can check in on their app, and they are being able to be identified as they are placing their order.”
The next innovation is with outdoor digital menu boards and Acrelec’s Creative Studio. “This allows us to unveil any marketing campaign, the menus, but also having the order view showing to the customer exactly what they are ordering when they are ordering,” Bisiaux said. This customizable approach allows operator control to shift menus based on time of day and peak-volume traffic.
Acrelec’s audio solution streamlines the traditional drive-thru speaker ordering process with targeted noise cancellation, making it easy to understand a customer’s order for improved accuracy.
The final piece of the drive-thru puzzle is QTimer 2.0, which is integrated into the entire system. “It is timing from the time the car is spending at each point of the drive-thru,” Bisiaux said.
“Additionally, it has analytics and reports on how long is the full customer journey.”
AUTHOR: James Kent
CONTRIBUTOR: Chloe Bisiaux