(NEXSTAR) — When you go through a fast food drive-thru, you likely have a few expectations. You want your order to come quickly, be accurate, and taste as expected.
If you’re familiar with drive-thrus, it may not come as a shock that some fast food chains are better at meeting those benchmarks. A new survey supports that belief.
Intouch Insight has released its annual drive-thru study, which analyzes the top fast food chains across multiple categories: order accuracy, speed, food quality, suggestive selling, and level of satisfaction. This year, they conducted over 1,600 drive-thru visits at 10 chains nationwide: Arby’s, Burger King, Carl’s Jr./Hardees (combined as one entity for the study), Chick-fil-A, Dunkin’, KFC, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, and — new this year — Raising Cane’s.
As a whole, Intouch Insight found the restaurants are improving across the board, with overall satisfaction, speed, and accuracy increasing compared to 2023.
Continuing its success was Chick-fil-A, which again dominated across multiple categories.
When ranked based on the fastest total time by car — a metric calculated by dividing the average total time by the average number of cars in the line — no chain was faster than Chick-fil-A’s time of 139.37 seconds. Close behind was Raising Cane’s, a newcomer to the study, which was the only other company with a total time below 200 seconds.
Chick-fil-A was not as successful in other speed-related categories.
Taco Bell again reigned supreme for total time (from entering the drive-thru through exiting with their food) and service time (the time between the order being placed and the food received), according to Intouch Insight.
Wait times are also up at Chick-fil-A, jumping from 123.72 last year to 181.15 seconds, the longest recorded this year. At just over 50 seconds, Carl’s Jr. and Hardees had the shortest wait times overall.
Chick-fil-A was, however, among the eight chains that cut down on their average service time this year. Only at Carl’s Jr. and Hardees did that metric increase.
The study found the most accurate orders at Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s, which tied for the top spot in the category this year at 93% accuracy. That’s an improvement from 92% and 88% last year, respectively. Only Burger King’s accuracy rating fell in this year’s study, going from 90% to 88%. The worst overall was Taco Bell at 85%.
Raising Cane's also gave Chick-fil-A a run for its money when it came to food quality, a category the chicken chains tied in this year. When it came to tasting "as expected," both scored at 99%, Intouch Insight found. Dunkin' was the sole chain in this category to score below 95%, coming in at 94%.
Chick-fil-A maintained its top spot when ranked based on satisfaction of service, a category it has continuously excelled in. Raising Cane's was close behind, edging out McDonald's by one percentage point.
When it came to the reported friendliness of service, Intouch Insight asked its study shoppers to rank the service as friendly, neutral, or not friendly. At three chains — Chick-fil-A, Raising Cane's, and Arby's — more than 80% of ratings were friendly (95%, 88%, and 82%, respectively).
Dunkin' had the lowest overall rating, with only 66% of ratings coming in as friendly.
Intouch Insight also reviewed the impact of artificial intelligence technology on fast food chains. The technology is not widely available, making up just 4% of the visits the study analyzed, but multiple companies have tested it.
Earlier this summer, Taco Bell announced it would expand the use of AI to hundreds of drive-thru locations before the end of the year. Over the summer, McDonald's wrapped up its test of AI in its drive-thru lanes, explaining that while there were "successes...we feel there is an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly."
Intouch Insight found that when ordering with AI technology, the total time was faster by nearly 30 seconds, 95% of orders were accurate, and reported overall satisfaction was higher.