What's It Like To Work At Taco Bell?

A reporter for BusinessWeek spent time at a Taco Bell in Tustin, California, and wrote a detailed article about it HERE.  I was surprised by the level of thought and analysis that has apparently gone into almost every aspect of the business, both from the employee side and the customer side. Among the interesting revelations were:

• "According to the National Restaurant Assn., the fast-food industry will do $168 billion in sales for 2011, and about 70 percent of that will come in through drive-thru windows."
• It allegedly takes an average of 164 seconds for Taco Bell to serve each customer at its drive thru window, from the time they order to the time they drive away.  That's less than 3 minutes. (I've never been served anywhere near that quickly there, though. Ever.)
• "The development of new menu items has become subservient to the need to get food to drivers as quickly as possible."
• "The Stuffer in the hot holding area stuffs the meat into the tortillas, ladling beef with Taco Bell's proprietary tool, the BPT, or beef portioning tool."
• "At some locations, 70 percent of the business was coming through the drive-thru, and 80 percent of that was coming in about 90 minutes of peak time around lunch. That meant that 56 percent of the total business was being conducted at one window in one and a half hours."