Drive-thru headsets and timers are the wireless headsets that staff wear at a drive-through restaurant, and the timing system that measures how long each car takes from the order point to the pick-up window. A drive-through, also spelt drive-thru, is a restaurant counter where customers order and collect their food without leaving their car.
A drive-through has a fixed path. The car stops first at the menu board, which has a speaker and a microphone. This is the order point. Then the car moves to a window to pay, and to a window to collect the food. Sometimes one window does both.
The headset lets the staff member taking orders hear the driver and reply, while she moves around the kitchen. Other staff wearing headsets can listen too, so the kitchen starts cooking while the order is still being taken. The order itself is entered into the restaurant's POS software.
The timer measures each car. A sensor at the order point, often a loop of wire under the road, notices when a car arrives. More sensors notice when it reaches each window and when it leaves. A screen in the kitchen shows the time of every car in the line.
Take, for example, a drive-through restaurant on a highway outside Vadodara. At 9:05 p.m., a car stops at the menu board, and the timer starts. The staff member greets the driver within 5 seconds, and takes an order of two burgers, fries and two cold coffees in 50 seconds. The car reaches the window at 9:06:40. The driver pays by UPI, and the food is handed over at 9:08:20. The car took 3 minutes and 20 seconds. The manager's screen shows that the average for the hour is 3 minutes and 50 seconds, and that most of the delay is at the window. So she moves one more person to packing.
Why measure every car? In a drive-through, cars cannot overtake. One slow order delays every car behind it, and some drivers leave the line.
Some chains now let an AI system take the order at the menu board. A speech-to-text model turns the driver's words into text, and the order is entered into the POS. Staff listen on their headsets and correct mistakes. Engine noise, music and accents make this a hard test of speech recognition.
Drive-throughs are most common in the United States, where a large share of fast-food orders are placed from a car. In India they are fewer, and are found mostly on highways and on the edges of large cities. Indoors, the same restaurant uses a kitchen display system to show cooks the orders.