Simulation of a Fast-Food Operation Where Dissatisfied Customers Renege

This paper presents the results of experiments with a simulation model for the operation of a fast-food kiosk. The kiosk was located in an office complex where a large lunch population, consisting mostly of office workers, was served by a number of competing food facilities. Each customer of the kiosk had an initial expectation of speed and quality of service. A customer arriving at the kiosk might decide not to wait, in view of the length of any queue in front of the kiosk and how long he was willing to wait. This is called balking. If the customer decided to join the queue, he observed the speed of the service others ahead of him received while in the queue, which he used to modify his own perception of the time he would have to spend waiting. A comparison of his time value and the expected wait would lead the customer to a decision as to leaving the queue or staying on. A customer who thus leaves is said to have reneged.A terminating simulation of the operation of the kiosk during a lunch period was based on a Bayesian approach. Experiments with the model revealed many interesting and useful relationships to help better understand the effect of the number of servers in the kiosk and of the food quality on the balking and reneging of the customers.