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In a rush? Here’s why drive-thrus can be faster than ordering inside

Pulling into a fast-food restaurant parking lot leaves many of us with the tough decision: What’s the fastest way to get my fries?

The Cost of Living team tackled this question for every Canadian who has ever found themselves on the road, in a rush and, well, hangry.

Former employees at McDonald’s and A&W revealed that staff were expected to have orders out for drive-thru customers in a shorter period of time than orders placed inside. They said the drive-thru had more staff allocated to it as well.

McDonald’s, A&W and Wendy’s Canada did not respond to CBC’s request for information about drive-thru versus dine-in speed. However, a spokesperson for Starbucks Coffee Canada did provide an email statement saying the company’s “priority is to provide the best Starbucks experience no matter where our customers find us.”

Drive-thru customers are “notoriously fickle,” said Robert Carter, a restaurant industry expert with The StratonHunter Group.

“If you have a bad experience in the drive-thru a couple of times, you’ve lost that customer and they’re going to go to the next drive-thru because they’re really being driven by that convenience factor,” Carter said.

Then, there’s the matter of optics.

If the drive-thru gets behind, the lineup will snake onto the street, blocking traffic as vehicles idle. 

Carter says fast-food chains don’t want to be seen as polluters, which is another reason why they put more resources into moving those cars along.

Finally, Carter says fast-food restaurants put greater value on drive-thru customers because they typically spend more money than customers who dine in.

“You may have families doing multiple orders, you may have somebody picking stuff up for people at the office,” he says. “So it’s a more profitable area of the business overall.”  Read more

Grocery chains are boosting profits by charging different prices for the same stuff

Ever wonder why the same container of Parmesan cheese costs more at one store compared to another store operated by the same company? 

It’s because grocery stores know some customers will pay more for the same product at a different location, so they use their different branded stores to charge a range of prices.

There’s a traditional example in economic theory: the country doctor who charged the local gentry top dollar. But in rural areas, there were a lot more poor farmers who couldn’t afford those prices.

So country doctors kept busy and maximized their income by also treating the poorer farm families even if they could only afford to pay in carrots and bushels of apples. Two different prices meant more business and more food for the winter.

Canadians are taking notice. Mary Briggs of Mississauga, Ont., thought she would take advantage of a 20 per cent seniors’ discount at Shoppers Drug Mart, a drugstore chain owned by Loblaw Companies Ltd. But she found that even after the discount, the drugstore price of $15.99 for the Tide Pods she wanted was more expensive than the $10.99 at the Loblaw-owned Your Independent Grocer.

But consumers can use that to their advantage. David Hardisty, an associate professor of marketing at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business in Vancouver, says businesses care about consumer loyalty as well as profits.

“You’re saving by shopping around,” he said. “You’re actually doing some good for the world, too. Because you are sending a signal. You’re telling the companies, ‘I’m not going to get ripped off like this’ … and that’s the only signal they’ll listen to and that’s the dollars.” Read more

Insider says Manulife Bank didn’t protect customers’ highly private information for years

A Manulife insider is blowing the whistle on what he says were major privacy issues within the company’s Canadian banking division that have potentially put thousands of customers at risk.

Customers’ bank account information and other personal details — millions of names, addresses, account details, social insurance and credit card numbers, birth dates and transactions, among other things — could be widely seen in a database with few privacy protections in place — accessed by more than 100 employees and shared with an unknown number of others, he said.

“Anyone who’s been a customer of Manulife bank … your data could have been taken by someone,” he claimed in an interview with Go Public.

“They could use it to steal your identity. They could open up a line of credit in your name, get credit cards in your name, sell the information to someone else, and there’s no way to ever know if it happened.”

Go Public has also obtained an internal Manulife report written in the spring of 2021 that mirrors the insider’s concerns. It documents data and privacy issues with that database, which at that point had existed for almost a decade.

In its statement, Manulife denied there was any breach of security safeguards and wrote that there was “never any evidence” customer data had been misused. The internal report, however, said there was no way to know. 

Go Public asked how Manulife is sure that no evidence of a breach means none has occurred. The company did not answer that question clearly. Read more

What else is going on?

Johnson & Johnson is proposing a nearly $9B US settlement for talcum product claims

The company has faced years of lawsuits alleging talcum powder led to cases of ovarian cancer or mesothelioma.

Feeling hopeless about our planet? Here’s how you can help in your very own backyard

Lawn grass is one of the biggest environmental issues of our time, and planting native species instead makes a big difference.

Don’t sit in the front passenger seats of 2018-2021 Atlas SUVs, Volkswagen says in a recall notice

More than 161,000 Volkswagen SUVs in the U.S. and Canada are being recalled due to a wiring defect that could deactivate the front passenger airbag, the company says.

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