People are willing to queue and pay to get food. Knowing peoples’ opinions on queuing is of interest to restaurant
stakeholders since it and related actions have a direct effect on revenue. While most previous studies focused on
dine-in restaurants, we observed queuing for fast food restaurants. Specifically, we observed the actual waiting time
of customers for a number of fast food restaurants, and compared the metrics with waiting times that customers
expected. During lunch time peak hours, customers spent on average 5.4 minutes waiting before they could get their
orders. The 5.4 minutes consisted of 2.42 minutes of queuing time and 2.98 minutes of service time. This total
waiting time is only slightly below the actual expected waiting time of 5.42 minutes. How the fast food restaurants
try to manage the perceived waiting time of customers was also discussed.
Keywords: Restaurant, queuing time, queue management, waiting time, customer satisfaction