Serving billions and billions: In less than 3 minutes

This final note today, in which the phrase time is money, is established once again as a truism.

From the 2013 Drive-Thru Performance Study, by the fast-food trade publication QSR Magazine: Last year, the average McDonald’s drive-through customer waited 189.5 seconds for her order. That’s a tad more than three minutes.

It matters, because the big chains do 60-70 percent of their business at the drive-through window.

The record? Wendy’s…back in 2003. 116 seconds, or less than two minutes.

Nobody’s been close since.