Boston Public Radio Podcast

Food writer Corby Kummer spoke to Boston Public Radio on Friday about how major fast food chains are bolstering infrastructure for mobile drive-through orders. Chipotle, for example, has created ‘Chipotlanes’ at many of its franchise stores for customers who have preordered meals online. “QR codes are big in drive-throughs now,” Kummer said. “If you go onto the app and you order your food, you can go into a special lane that various places are installing, it will read your QR code order, and your food will be delivered, some of it virtually contact-free.” Companies that previously had no drive-through lanes at all are creating them for the first time, like Shake Shack and Applebees, Kummer noted. Those with established fast food drive-through lanes are amping up the use of technology to improve customers’ experiences. Burger King is exploring the use of Bluetooth technology to calculate and predict a customer’s order based on everything from prior orders to the weather that particular day. “There’s more an