Hunter Lupe wrote:
How do you minimize the amount of wasted food
and the time it takes to get your order once you've made it? I can think of a couple of strategies, but it'd be interesting to know which one is actually used; the basic variants would probably be to simply cook on demand (which minimizes waste but removes fast from fast food), or keep a large burger stock (which lets you serve people immediately, but results in waste if people turn out to not want something in particular). Are "wasted" burgers reheated, or?
Is there some clever predictive stuff going on behind the scenes?
Well there's a chart that you're supposed to follow that tells you how many of each patty you're supposed to cook at certain restaurant levels, but most of the time we cook more than indicated for the chart, and keep the product in the heating trays for longer. I would say that 98% of the burgers we serve were not cooked on demand.
Although, sometimes if it's busy enough, then the fry cook generally just keeps a steady supply of patties coming. Everything's automated though, and it only takes about 30 seconds to cook a batch of big mac / cheeseburger patties.
The assembly process is generally pretty fast though, you have a huge stock of things in front of you and it should only take less than 15 seconds to assemble a burger once you've got the buns heated.
"Wasted" burgers are thrown in a waste bin and then counted at some point.