Fast-food order accuracy rises with English-fluent hiring pool
— -- If your next fast-food order at the drive-through has the right food in the right bag, you may have something surprising to thank: the bad economy.
"It's a no-brainer," Puzder says. "Hiring people who are fluent in English has always been something we've wanted to do. Now we can."
That's because, with layoffs on the rise — particularly in hard-hit Southern California — the chain can be more selective in hiring. The unemployment rate in California hit 7.7% in August vs. the national rate of 6.1% — the most recent month from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Bob Sandelman, a fast-food researcher, is not surprised order accuracy is up and puts the reason bluntly: "When times are tough, people are willing to take jobs for which they're over-qualified."
For the fast-food world overall, order accuracy is a nagging problem. At drive-throughs, botched orders are the No. 1 problem, says, Sherri Daye Scott, editor at QSR Magazine, which does an annual ranking on order accuracy. "Speed is less important to consumers than getting orders right."
QSR's statistics show Carl's accuracy clearly is improving — up to 93.6% in the QSR study conducted this spring vs. 89.3% in the accuracy study it conducted in spring of 2007. When QSR did its research in 2007, "language barrier" was an issue for 3.8% of its drive-through purchases at Carl's vs. 1.2% this spring.
Carl's is not hiring fewer Latinos or other minorities — those numbers are the same, Puzder says. But it is hiring more crewmembers with more skills. "I can't believe this is unique to Carl's," he adds. "We're all hiring from the same labor pool."
Also, he notes, employee turnover is down as folks hang onto jobs.
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