Cranbrook McDonald’s celebrates 40 years and a new dual lane drive thru

On the 40th anniversary of McDonald's in Cranbrook, the restaurant has added a dual lane drive thru. David Kaiser is celebrating 25 years as owner of the franchise and says he can't believe how quickly the time has flown by.

"We are constantly searching for ways to enhance and/or speed up the drive-thru process. We look at our drive-thru as almost a separate business to the interior restaurant," said David Kaiser, when asked about the new dual lane drive-thru. "The reason for that is that 65% of our business goes through the drive-thru. So it is extremely busy and takes some talented staff to handle the speed at which everything flows."

He further explains, "For us, the order point is the critical point of congestion. Some people want just a coffee while others maybe ordering several items in a large meal order. Depending on who comes first, someone may wait too long for their order to be processed, unless you have dual land ordering. During our busiest hours, we have already seen times when we have increased our car count by 50% over our previous best hours, so dual lane drive thru does work and does speed things up.

The investment was substantial, partly because of the complexity of the electronics, cameras, etc. and partly because I also paved the parking lot. It was well over six figures in cost but in the long term, it will be a good investment and be a better experience for our customers. And if you want more market share, you have to provide what the customer is looking for and for McDonald's, many of our customers want speed and convenience."

The dual lane drive-thru is not unique to our Cranbrook McDonald's, in fact, McDonald's corporation has been installing them across the Canada in a number of locations. The critical factor is overall sales. Dual lane would not be a good investment unless the restaurant has very good sales numbers. For the Cranbrook McDonald's, they had reached some capacity barriers for several years and so it was a natural step. When your drive-thru line-ups get excessively long, people have a look at the line-up and then just drive away. So we were anxious to change that situation for our customers. And thankfully, it is working extremely well," he added.

Owner David Kaiser was quick to praise his excellent staff for the restaurants success, "I am blessed with some great people on our team. Roger Rusnell, our market supervisor, plus our management team and drive-thru staff have worked hard in the past month eliminating any issues in the process and ensuring everyone on the team is well trained and ready to rock'n'roll during the busy hours."