Abstract

The fast food industry mostly known as a quick service industry, is constantly growing at a rapid pace in hopes of keeping up with the demands of the market. As the routines of families and single family households have become more and more chaotic, they are looking for quick meals as a substitute for dining out and cooking at home. Due to such craze, fast food restaurants such as Taco Bell, have gained a top position in the industry where customers can have a hot quick meal in a flash or we may say less than five minutes. A case study is done by a reporter who became a Taco Bell employee for a few hours so that he could analyze the queueing model on how customer order processing was done at Taco Bell. The process will review the drive-thru process as well as the process when a customer places an order inside. The purpose of this paper is to analyze, discuss and make suggestions on how Taco Bell can improve its present and future position in the Quick Service restaurant industry. Not only today has Taco Bell been focusing on quick service but ever since “1988, Taco Bell introduced six core-menu items for the reduced price of 59 cents and offered free drink refills. Taco Bell has since continued to change and innovate. Its new strategy meant restructuring the business to become more efficient and cost-effective. To do this, the company relied on an integrated set of operations, research models, including forecasting to predict customer arrivals, simulation to determine the optimum labor required to provide a desired customer service, and optimization to schedule and allocate crew members to minimize the payroll. Through 1997, these models have saved over $53 million in labor costs” (Hueter & Swart 1998).

Introduction
Taco Bell is a subsidiary of Yum Brand Incorporated, which was founded in Downey but its’ headquarter is located in Irvine, California (Wikipedia). Glen Bell the founder of Taco Bell in the early 1960’s. Taco Bell specialty is Mexican fast food such as tacos and quesadillas. Taco Bell has “restaurants in Canada, Guam, Aruba, Dominican Republic, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Hawaii, Asia, and Europe,” all operating under the same umbrella. “Taco Bell chain went public on the Pacific Stock Exchange, enabling Bell to receive bank financing for the first time. Previously, all financing had been secured on a private basis. The first Taco Bell was opened with 40 shares, each worth $100 and held mostly by Bell's family (Shivlka 2012).”
PepsiCo noticed Taco Bell success and entered into an agreement with them in order to expand their business. PepsiCo being a subsidiary of Pizza Hut tried a Taco Kid promotion that failed. After the failed attempt to introduce Taco Kid to the market PepsiCo began courting Mr. Bell to buy Taco Bell outright. PepsiCo purchased Taco Bell for $125 million in stocks.
Taco Bell is rapidly growing and claiming its spot in the fast food industry. Its company perspective is “Taco Bell works with its suppliers to deliver great tasting, high quality food. Our food is topped, layered, loaded, melted, and grilled fresh for you, right when you order it. This means two things. First, you get your food prepared exactly how you want it. And second, it always tastes fresh” (Encyclopedia).
As we research and review Taco Bell current standing in the Quick Service Industry, we will focus on its need to fine tune its operational process of the drive thru service. The drive thru service is a very important aspect of the fast food industry, however, a recent survey shows that serving of fresh food has begun to outweigh the need of fast service for healthier get it right service. Based on a 2012 QRS survey Taco Bell, average service time rose from 150 seconds to 158 seconds and this time continues to grow among the restaurants (Tuttle, 2013).
Along with trying to maintain its standing in the Quick Service Industry Taco Bell pride itself on diversity. One of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell’s principle states “for us, diversity is a way of life and a way of doing business. Everyone can and does make a difference in our organization. One of our HWWT2 principles – Believe in all People – underscores the importance of actively seeking diversity in others; believing everyone has the potential to make a difference; and coaching and supporting every individual to grow to their full capacity. This adds perspective and depth to everything we do. We’ve also found that a diverse team makes for better problem solvers, services all our customers more effectively, and creates a richer culture for all of us to enjoy. We are also increasing the representation of African Americans, Hispanics and women among our key talent/decision makers, and growing the pipeline of diversity in our mid-level manager ranks” (http://www.politicsforum.org). Method
Taco Bell is well known in the United States. In analyzing the S.W.O.T. analysis, Taco Bell’s most important strength is its low cost, and the most important opportunity is global expansion. If Taco Bell introduces their low cost products into new countries and new markets, Taco Bell will quickly be able to capture even more market share. Currently, Taco Bell’s biggest threat is other fast food restaurants such as McDonalds. Taco Bell can work around this threat by marketing their Mexican-style food as something very different from McDonalds, and by offering their products at a lower price. With the combination of Strength and Opportunities, we generate strategies that use strengths to take advantage of opportunities. Maintaining low prices in the U.S. and carrying it into international markets would help Taco Bell gain a competitive advantage aboard the U.S. As the number of single families increase in America and other parts of the world, the need for quick service restaurants would increase as well. Taco Bell would enter the new market as an affordable quick-service restaurant, which would appeal to many single parent families. In addition, this low-cost strategy would appeal to the general population since many people would enjoy quick-quality food at a low price. This would increase revenues for the company. On the other hand, demands specific to the market may increase costs in areas such as marketing, research and development, and human resources management. Thus, the increase in revenues may not derive profit immediately as costs may increase.
Taco Bell is looking at the operational elements of the drive thru service as a quick service restaurant (QSR). The drive thru has proven to be an important business at many restaurants, but especially Taco Bell. Taco Bell as with any fast food restaurant can’t go wrong by looking to improve on speed and quality on their customer service process. “Analyzing a Taco Bell Restaurant” focuses on customer service by describing the mechanics of the drive thru process from greeting the customers, using the headset to delivering the customer order. With processing the customer order Taco Bell takes into consideration every aspect of the process in order to maximize its efficiency. In other words, Taco Bell is scripted from the minute a customer arrives at the drive thru or comes through the door up to the way the food is wrapped. Taco Bell stands behind its name in efficiency, accuracy and speed. It’s probably a great idea to have Taco Bell as well as other restaurants in that frame of posture when thinking efficiency because without being scripted it could sound impersonal to their customers.

The diagram below depicts Taco Bell’s process by using a flowchart which represents the plan of the service. The line represents a line of visibility and the items above the line are things that the customer can control and the items below the line are activities that the service manager handles on behalf of the customer. More or less service manager activities are those happenings behind the scenes that are used to take care of the customer.