Mcdonald’s

This McDonalds is one of the new style of restaurants where you can place your order either at the counter or on the touch screen terminals located in the centre of the seating area.
In thoery, its a good concept, but I have my doubts as to whether it is as efficient as the old style human server.
On this occasion, we decided to use the touch screens to place our order. The screens are massive and everything has it’s own button. To be honest, it seemed to take so long to place an order, it would have been quicker to go to the normal till point and make two seperate orders! You can only use the touch screens if you are paying by card or contactless and once you have pair, the receipt will show your order number at the top, at which point you proceed to the counter and wait for your number to be called. Some of the old tills have been removed from the counter to make way for the order collection area, so now there is only a maximum of 2 manned tills!
We waited for our order for quite a while and the order collection area was quite congested even though there weren’t that many orders displayed on the monitor (which shows the number of the orders waiting to be fulfilled). When we did finally get our order, the food was hot and was just your standard McDonalds food.
I asked my niece if she fancied a McFlurry. Of course she did, but this time I went to the manned till as it would be quicker. Oh how wrong could I be! We ws served and paid straight away and given our receiprt, but instead of the assistant getting the McFlurry for us there and then, we had to join the order collection area and await our number being called. We must have waited a good 3 or 4 minutes for one McFlurry! In any other restaurant, something would have to be said, but as they generally call the orders out in number order, you have to wait your turn.
One good feature of the new style was the addition of recycling bins. One for liquids, one for paper cups and one for plastics. Considering their aim is to put zero waste into land fill, how come there isn’t a bin for cardboard or waste food?
The whole experience should have been much better in my opinion. The concept is good but poorly executed with long waits in the order collection area no matter how big your order.
Our local McDonalds is currently closed and having the same refit as this store, so I will have to try again to see if they have ironed out the problems.