I kind of like the approach that, I think it was Wendy's tried... which was having better trained, centralized order takers at computers to handle multiple drive-throughs at once. A well-versed, clear spoken, native language speaker with good menu/product knowledge taking orders for 3-4 locations as a sole task is imo a much better option.

Of course, the Wendy's nearest me seems to get something wrong with my order every single time. It's not the order taker either, the receipt is always what I ordered, just the person making it or otherwise getting it together just fails in one way or another.

On the plus side, between the disappointment and increased pricing, I now get fast food maybe once a month. The cost used to be roughly a wash between buying something at the store and making it myself... that's not nearly the case anymore. And while store pricing has gone up a lot, most of the most massive spikes in prices are junk foods I'm less inclined to keep in the house. win-win.