The goal is to make the order process quicker, with fewer mistakes, and it's working, so far. An agent can take as many as 95 orders per hour. The agent will take an order from Hawaii one minute, and then Wyoming the next. They use the time it takes a car to move forward in line to serve another queue in another location.

Our Joe Fleischer pointed out the up-sell opportunity in call center fast-food ordering: "It's really centralizing the function of not only taking the order but advising the customer on getting more out of the product, which can sell more — at least in theory."

We covered this phenomenon last year, shortly after its inception in an article called Would You Like Fries With Your Call Center?

Something similar is happening in the U.K. A London curry restaurant is among those that receive corporate take-out orders that first pass through a call center in Delhi, India. New Kerala reported last January that lastminute.com uses Indian call centers to fill orders to restaurants like Café Spice Namaste in London.

The café's owner was quoted: "My staff had been extremely intrigued by these calls for a while. They try on their American accents with us but we were pretty sure the calls were coming from India. It is amusing that the orders travel nearly 5000 miles to be finally delivered just half a mile away."