They’re run head and shoulders above every other fast food restaurant, maybe the secret is paying employees enough to make that happen?
edit: changed management to employees to capture more generally.
edit: changed management to employees to capture more generally.
It's often compared to Five Guys but the vast majority of Five Guys I've been in have employees that don't really seem to care.
But in that market we do have Burger Lounge which goes well beyond In-N-Out's service level. We also have Luna Grill for Mediterranean, similar excellence in service and quality of food.
And more to the point, that In-N-Out is so exceptional in both food and service it can begin to draw comparisons to operations in a higher market segment.
I haven't had such consistent high quality of anything at any other chain.
Yep definitely going to different In-N-Outs.
I'm curious if there is any data on franchised versus non franchised restaurants and if there is a way to objectively compare them.
As committed as everyone was the one thing I would have seriously cracked down on was... Wait for it... Pulling the fries out early. A couple of the managers didn't have the stomach for waiting the full time when cars were stacked up. They were mistakenly prioritizing the service time (which is usually sacred TBH!) over the quality of the french fries. This is a huge mistake and Mcdonalds has very tight lifetime limits on fries for a reason; aint nobody wants undercooked or stale fries.
I always dropped my own fries for my free meal, and would often invite people in to purchase fries while I was there so they could be done right. A 1/2, or ideally 1/4, basket cooks the best and most evenly at the McDonalds prescribed cooking times IMHO. Full baskets without a cooking time adjustment would result in fries that are not quite so cooked properly.
All of our drive through times were complete bullshit because of this. Even during slow times where we'd have just a car every few minutes managers would IMMEDIATELY clear them off as they just need to "remember" the order. Which, as you can guess, increased wrong order complaints but those are also not sent to corporate so they never cared.
With franchised restaurants the promotion ladder looks like employee -> manager -> dead-end.
The McD by our house growing up was amazing. Even as a teen I remember it being well run. As an adult I moved to a different city and the local McD was the worst I’ve ever seen. That includes highway service area stores. Be curious to confirm my suspicions as to which is corporate.