The 2009 Quick Service Drive-Thru Performance Study was produced and conducted by Insula Research.

The primary objective of the annual study is to determine the leading restaurant chains in several categories of drive-thru operations. Categories measured in the study include but are not limited to: wait time, service time, order accuracy, suggestive-sell incidence, exterior appearance, speaker clarity, menuboard appearance, availability of electronic payment options, and order-confirmation boards. The overall “best drive-thru” composite score rankings are based on each chain’s performance in the categories of service speed, order accuracy, menuboard appearance, and speaker clarity.

Data for the study was collected during the months of April, May, June, and July of 2009. Restaurants were visited between the lunch hours of 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., and between the dinner hours of 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Any given restaurant location could be visited a maximum of twice—once during the lunch period and once during the dinner period. A total of 9,010 service times were collected, and 4,552 orders were reviewed for accuracy. The 2009 study included assessments from 20 quick-service restaurant chains. Information was collected in all 50 states.

A sample size selected for each chain is based on the total number of drive-thru units each chain operates. Analysis was performed to set sample sizes which resulted in approximately the same margin of error for each chain included in the study. For this study the maximum error at a 95 percent confidence level was targeted at 5.7 percent in a two-way split of the data.