---
title: "Study: McDonald's May Be Popular, but its Drive-Thru is the Slowest"
url: https://burnaze.com/article/112512f9-f030-4bda-b2cd-6c13cccbcac1
source: "1851 Franchise"
original_url: https://1851franchise.com/study-mcdonalds-may-be-popular-but-its-drive-thru-is-the-slowest-2708174
category: "Burger"
industry: "Restaurants"
segment: "Burger"
topics: ["Operations"]
published: 2018-10-15T18:13:01.000Z
modified: 2026-11-01T02:39:13.844Z
image: https://newimage.1851franchise.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=85,format=webp,width=1280,height=720/story/featureImage/79659de04800e40d38d1513934355d9e232.jpg
---

# Study: McDonald's May Be Popular, but its Drive-Thru is the Slowest

**TL;DR:** McDonald's had the slowest drive-thru service among popular fast food brands, with an average wait time of 273.29 seconds, according to a report in The Takeout.

*originally published in 1851 Franchise on 2018-10-15. [Read the original](https://1851franchise.com/study-mcdonalds-may-be-popular-but-its-drive-thru-is-the-slowest-2708174).*

## Story

Citing the 2018 QSR Drive-Thru Study , which analyzed drive-thru wait time data at popular fast food brands, The Takeout noted that McDonald’s has an average wait time of 273.29 seconds, which is just above 4.5 minutes.

Also slow is Chick-fil-A, which averages a 260.85-second wait time, according to the article.

## Entities

- 1851 Franchise (publication)
- Restaurants (sector)
- fast food (topic)
- service (topic)
- study (topic)

---
Originally reported by 1851 Franchise (https://1851franchise.com/study-mcdonalds-may-be-popular-but-its-drive-thru-is-the-slowest-2708174). Summarized by Burnaze (https://burnaze.com/article/112512f9-f030-4bda-b2cd-6c13cccbcac1).