The Best News,To Go!	December 2003
Fast, Faster, FASTEST? Americans know it and love it, but just how fast is it?
(Holland, MI) - Competition within America's fast food industry is cut-throat and ruthless.  With each restaurant striving to perform  better  than  its competitors, the customer becomes the true beneficiary of this head-on clash.  The larger-than-life showdown between fast food giants Hot 'N Now and Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers is one for the ages.  Wendy's, a national juggernaut in fast food service competition, has placed in the top three out of all fast food restaurants in the past five years (Corbin). Hot 'N Now, a regional  powerhouse, has yet to crack the top ten in the national rankings. The Classic Single from Wendy's vs. Hot 'N Now's cheap, sweet prices. Does the name say it all? Is Hot 'N Now's hot and now service all it's cracked up to be?  Top fast food correspondents Jeff Seymour, 21, and Rob Knecht, 21, bravely entered the field to gather data to settle this debate and have some lunch.   On Monday, December 1 at twelve-noon (lunchtime), each researcher traveled to the north side of Holland, embracing  their assignments. For a period of one half-hour they covertly observed the drive-thru windows at each respective restaurant, recording each car's time from completion of order at the speaker to departure from the pick-up window.	Assuming that all is equal in the fast food industry, there should be no significant difference in the speed of the competing drive-thru windows.  However, because of Wendy's tradition of excellence in previous studies, the keen researchers alternatively hypothesized that Wendy's would live up to its supreme reputation in comparison to Hot 'N Now. To make sense of all of these numbers, Sarah Smith, head statistician for Icebox incorporated, assisted Seymour and Knecht in a complex statistical analysis of the collected data. The team calculated descriptive statistics of the data such as mean and standard deviation. They then used a two-sample t test statistic with an independent simple random sample from a normal population to compare the mean drive-thru speeds. But what does all that mean?

The Best News,To Go!

December 2003

During the thirty minute observation period, 27 cars passed through Wendy's drive-thru and 29 passed through Hot 'N Now's window (See Appendix A). The average time from order to exit for one car at Wendy's was 93.96 seconds, 33.04 seconds faster than its 2002 national championship time, and 200.97 seconds for Hot 'N Now (Newpoff). The standard deviations (approximate average distance from the mean) for each, respectively, were 46.66 seconds and 91.14 seconds.  This means that on average, a Wendy's customer made it through the drive-thru 107.01 seconds faster than a Hot 'N Now customer. This difference in the means is definitely significant. When conducting this test of significance, the test statistic, t, was calculated to be -5.58 with a P-value of 0.000, well below the acceptable level of 0.05. Still, what does this all mean?  The test statistic, t, basically indicates how many standard deviations  the difference in our sample means is from 0. In this study, the t-statistic is not really the key to our comparison. The P-value, however, is the crucial piece of evidence. The P-value tells the probability of observing a value of a test statistic at least as extreme as that observed in the sample, if the null (original) hypothesis is true.  If the P-value is less than the acceptable level of 0.05, the original hypothesis can be rejected and the alternative hypothesis accepted.

Since the P-value is less than 0.05, the researchers can conclude that, on average, customers spend less time in Wendy's drive-thru than in Hot 'N Now's.  This means that the statistics show that Wendy's still sits proudly atop the throne of drive-thru speed supremacy.  Further research through the two-sample t confidence interval indicates that the team is 95% confident that Wendy's drive-thru mean time is between 68 and 145 seconds faster than Hot 'N Now. Most definitely, Wendy's has solidified its dominance.  Of course, as a small corporation of three college students. Icebox Incorporated is capable of and does make mistakes. Since money doesn't grow on trees for college students and they are often pressed for time, data collection techniques may not have been state of the art and sample size could have been larger.  In addition, order size, customer complications, and staff size could have affected the results. Because of all of the potentially harmful variables, it may have been beneficial to collect data on several different days at several different times to minimize invariability. Although both fast food correspondents honestly admit to favoring Wendy's and its 99 cent value menu, personal preferences did not get in the way of statistical analysis. At least for now, Dave Thomas can look down and smile, knowing that he left his fledgling company in good, and fast hands!

     Time (Seconds)

Appendix B

 Work Referenced  

Corbin, Brett. "Fast-Food Restaurants Fight for Title of Best Drive-Thru." Chronicle-Tribune, Grant County, IN. Nov. 3, 2003.
<www.chronicle-tribune.com/news/stories/20031103/localnews/5 72411.html>

Newpoff, Laura. "Drive-Thru Service Speeds Wendy's to Elite Ranking." Business First, Columbus, OH. Oct. 14, 2002.
<www.bizi oumals.com/columbus/stories/2002/10/ 14/newscolumn2.html>