When it comes to dining out, Americans have an appetite for life in the fast lane: U.S. fast-food revenues are estimated at $417.5 billion in 2025, and the industry is projected to reach $1.25 trillion worldwide by 2033.^1,2

Some fast-food consumers are in such a rush that they don’t even leave their cars to get a meal. In fact, 43% of fast-food restaurant orders are placed at drive-through windows, translating to some $140 billion in annual business.³ And more than a quarter (27%) of customers enjoy their meals from the comfort of their cars.⁴

With the growing taste for speedy eats, some quick-service restaurants are looking for innovative ways to serve fast food faster.

A need for speed

When did speed become a priority in dining? According to industry legend, in the 1910s White Castle founder Walt Anderson was frustrated by the long cooking time for meatballs so he flattened them into patties to speed up the process — and by 1921 the restaurant earned the moniker of the world’s first fast-food chain.^5,6

The assembly-line mindset and some of the standardized efficiency practices pioneered by White Castle became hallmarks of a thriving fast-food segment for decades, until that momentum slowed in the years leading up to the pandemic.⁷ But in an industry built on the notion of speed, time is money — and with Americans valuing their time at $240 per hour on average, the need for speed may be critical to stay competitive.

Read more: Time is money

On the fast track

Several food chains are turning to AI and other technology to help them make strides in the speed race, in areas from managing kitchens, predicting demand, and streamlining production to increasing order accuracy, reducing drive-through times, and delivering a better customer experience overall.

Taco Bell holds the top spot for fastest drive-through lines, averaging 278.84 seconds from the time customers arrive to receiving their orders.⁸ Its parent company, Yum! Brands, has introduced AI ordering in some Taco Bell and KFC locations to personalize drive-through experiences based on customers’ previous orders or time of day.⁹

Shake Shack is also focused on drive-through optimization as a key ingredient to multiplying its roughly 330 company-owned U.S. locations into 1,500.¹⁰ The burger house is trying to shave time off bottlenecks by simplifying digital menu boards to streamline ordering, and is creating bespoke models by location to optimize labor allocation and distribution.

With about 60% of sales coming from its drive-throughs, Chick-fil-A serves up to 700 cars per hour and is taking steps to make them even faster, using drones to assess traffic patterns, and “game film” in its kitchens and windows to evaluate and optimize food hand-off times.¹¹

McDonald’s is exploring a different route to breaking the speed limit: Eliminating the dining room altogether. The Golden Arches recently introduced its first U.S. “On the Go” location in Los Angeles, dedicated exclusively to digital and drive-through orders: Instead of a lobby or indoor seating, it features food lockers to pick up delivery orders.¹²

A casual acceleration

Americans spend about $40 monthly on fast-casual dining on average, and with the U.S. fast-casual market estimated to grow by $84.5 billion from 2025-2029, some of these restaurants are entering the race too.¹³

Chipotle, which generates $9.9 billion in sales and goes through about 5.2 million avocados a year, has ventured into robotics, using an “Autocado” robot to cut, core, and peel an avocado in about 26 seconds.

The chain is also reducing the time and labor of in-person ordering by adding “Chipotlanes” drive throughs that enable customers to order in advance on their app and pick up food from their cars at a designated time. Sales are 10% to 15% higher at the more than 800 Chipotle locations with Chipotlanes,  and the company expects to add them to at least 80% of its future restaurants.¹⁴

Read more: Order up: Fast-casual favorites ring up at $40 a month

Shake on it

Strategic collaborations are also on the menu for dishing up some of these new efficiency opportunities.

Building on its AI experiment, Yum! Brands is partnering with Nvidia in the chipmaker’s first foray into food, rolling out technology designed to take orders, speed up wait times, and suggest specific menu items with the quickest prep time in 500 of its locations by year end.¹⁵

Through an ongoing partnership with Google Cloud, McDonald’s is in the process of beefing up its 43,000 restaurants using technology to help predict equipment breakdowns and analyze operating data, with the aim of growing its customers from 175 million to 250 million by 2027.¹⁶

It may be the sky’s the limit when it comes to building business through these alliances: Thanks to a $4 billion deal with Delta Airlines, Shake Shack fans can dig into the iconic burger on select flights — while traveling at 500 miles per hour. 

Read more: Order up: The beefy business of burgers

Made to order

What’s next in the quick-service dining space? While restaurants integrating technology may need time to work through some kinks, experiences could get even more personalized with innovations like facial recognition or license-plate reading to automatically identify customers and their preferences.¹⁷