Ok, so today @ Wendy's, a great thought crossed my mind. Wouldn't it be great if instead of telling the cashier your order, you had a 'preference' card of sorts they could just scan?
I hate tomatoes on sandwiches. Usually every place I go, I order my food sans the little red, seeded devils. My Wendy's order usually goes something like this: Spicy combo, no tomato, no lettuce, add onion. Substitute chili for the fries, add onions & cheese to the chili, and I'll have Dr. Pepper to drink. Now - the poor person entering that all into the computer gets halfway done subtracting out my lettuce and tomatoes, and then gets stuck. The cash register usually tries to be smarter than it is, so it's already prompted them for a drink, thereby screwing up their ability to go back and substitute the chili, as well as add the onions and cheese. Wouldn't it be so much easier to bypass all that w/ a scan? Heck, you could even go to a system like a lottery ticket, you scribble out what you want, and feed it in. If you're not a picky eater, you just order by number as usual.
Jason brought up the point that the main reason for the order boards that display your order in the drive through is to eliminate mistakes in the order process, thereby saving money. Why not bring those cost savings and simplicity to the counter?
Further discussion led to an idea to have touch screen menus/station @ the tables where you could stick your card in and update your preferences. Ideally, you'd also be able to update your preferences via an online interface as well. Possibly it would then be pushed down to your card next time you used it in one of the table stations.
I think I've got more on this in my head, but I'll throw this out there for now, as I know Jason has some ideas he'd like to expound on w/ this.
--Josh
