Taco Bell tries new electronic drive-thru toolTaco Bell tries new electronic drive-thru tool

IRVINE Calif. Quick-service restaurant operator and franchisor Taco Bell Corp., based here, saw improvement at a problem restaurant after installing HME Electronics' new Zoom Drive-Thru Time Management System, a Taco Bell representative said.

"Within one week of installing the Zoom Drive-Thru Time Management System, we were able to shave 60 seconds off our total drive-thru time at a store with historical speed-of-service problems," according to Bill Mayeski, San Diego district manager for Taco Bell, which has about 5,600 restaurants systemwide. "Because our team members can see real-time results for the drive-thru on the Zoom dashboard display, they are motivated to achieve speed-of-service goals and contribute to the overall success of the store."

Users can program Zoom to track and record times tied to as many as eight different phases of drive-thru service, displaying the captured data on a 17-inch LCD screen, sources at Poway, Calif.-based HME said. They said Zoom supports customizable reports in text or graphical form for viewing at the store or remotely using an Internet or network connection and Web browser software, and they indicated that store-level information can be exported to a central database for multi-store comparisons.