White Castle needs to take a good hard look at this restaurant and decide if it can possibly meet it's standards for customer service, service times and quality of food. There is no doubt in my mind that the four employees that were on duty when we were there were doing the best that they possible could, but sometimes, that's simply not good enough. Maybe this location is new? It is located inside an underwhelming oversized Chevron Station that is perhaps trying to compete with the infamous Buc-ee's in New Braunfels, TX. If so, they've failed miserably. Yes, they have something like 95 pumps and lots of square footage inside the building but the space is not being used efficiently and the products don't "flow". My partner said to the person behind the jerky counter, "wow, you have so many to choose from" and the employee replied, "yes and the're expensive too". I would say that the trainer failed to teach an important lesson. Not only should you NEVER disparage a competitors product, but NEVER, EVER disparage your own!
I spent a few years in fast food. Get 'em in, get 'em out. Upsell, suggestive sell, hurry, hurry, hurry. And don't forget to smile.
In the White Castle section of the store, there was one employee taking orders, one employee cooking the sliders, one employee packaging the individual sliders and one employee floating, doing whatever she could to help. There appeared to be two cook tops and only one was in use. The "cook" should have been able to use both cooktops at the same time, especially since the menu is simple and the orders appear to be mostly sliders and cheese sliders.
There is no efficient way that the packaging employee could pack more than one slider at a time since each has to be folded open one-at-a-time. You could design a rack to hold open boxes to be loaded when it's busy. Just hold the rack upright and slide the sliders right in.
The cashier had to take orders at the counter plus answer phones. Then she had to check tickets and assemble orders to be presented to customers. The floater went and did whatever she was asked to.
It looked like one of the problems might be large orders. They do offer large packages such as the Crave Case (30 sliders) and numerous other multi-slider packages. No one can ever predict when those large orders will occur so you have to leverage the laws of averages to ensure that your staff can successfully handle whatever volume of business comes your way.
When the person who ordered in front of us got his order, I figured good, we're next. And we were. But we had to wait for the cashier to move away from the register, walk to read the tickets and then assemble orders. She took the time to assemble three orders and brought them up to the counter all at once, but still calling and handing out one order at a time. She saved steps for herself and kept each customer waiting longer than absolutely necessary. That's okay when you're operating a smoothly oiled machine but with as many roadblocks as they had in place, it didn't make sense to add a few more speed bumps.
I know that condiments are a huge expense for all fast food restaurants. At some point, you have to weigh the benefits of controlling condiments costs against the cost of lost business from disatisfied customers who had to wait to receive ketchup, mustard, etc. If nothing else, put small quantities in stainless steel pans and when it gets busy, put them out so you can focus on customer service.
I happened to be wearing a shirt with the logo of my Fire Agency on it when I was in the White Castle. The cashier took a very careful look at the logo and then said "nevermind, you're not from around here". I was thinking perhaps she thought I might know someone who worked locally and asked her about it. She replied, no. We give discounts to local first responders. Good for them and thank you for "helping" first responders. But to me, it was an odd slap in the face. We don't choose who we help when we help and we expect nothing in return other than thanks. But to hear the "discount" presented in such a manner just sounded odd to me.
Last complaint. It seems like more Fast Food restaurants are going to monitors for menu boards. There's an obvious advantage. You can change menu items and prices at will. You can run commercials. You can advertise specials. One thing you can't do is see the screen if you have polarized sunglasses on unless you turn your head a certain way.
Oh, the sliders were as expected. I had them before when I found them in the frozen food section somewhere. I just wanted to see how they tasted "fresh off the griddle". Meh. If i'm starving, I'll scarf down a 1/2-dozen. Given a choice, you more likely to find me In 'n Out or gnawing on a Whopper. read more