NCR Corporation, a leader in consumer transaction technologies, announced that Golden Chick, a Texas-based quick-service restaurant, has successfully piloted the NCR Drive-Thru Timer to help improve the customer experience and efficiency of its business.
The suite of NCR software and hardware integrates with a restaurant’s existing point of sale system, such as Aloha, to provide a digital display of real-time data on speed, accuracy, and ticket averages to optimize drive-thru performance. The system was installed in two of its corporate-owned locations helping shift a percentage of its heavy in-store traffic to the fast drive-thru lanes, and since then sales have grown in those locations.
Since opening its first store more than 40 years ago, Golden Chick has experienced steady growth with new restaurants opening throughout the US, bringing the chain-wide total to over 130. As business continues to grow for Golden Chick, the chain needed to maintain the speed and accuracy that customers had grown to expect, particularly in the drive-thru. However, Golden Chick lacked the real-time data necessary to identify areas for improvement and measure consistency to make the necessary improvements.
“The NCR Drive-thru Timer is a powerful technology that gives us real-time visibility into the operational efficiency of our drive-thru while providing us with the necessary metrics to make adjustments ‘on-the-fly’,” says Jay Tharian, new store coordinator at Golden Chick. “We are piloting the system in two of our locations and have seen a significant increase in ticket count, ticket average and sales. We intend to roll this solution out to several of our sites by the end of 2015.”
Drive-thru data is accessible at the store through easy-to-view displays for the crew and managers, while reports are available to management from any location via a web interface.
“Throughput is one of the most important elements to operating a successful quick service business,” says Dennis Davidson, vice president of Specialty Hospitality. “We are thrilled to provide this unique technology to Golden Chick as they take a progressive approach to drive-thru sales and service.”