The Herald-Leader's Karla Ward explains:

When customers pull up to the drive-through, a call center employee asks for the order and clicks on images of each menu item on a computer screen as the customer places the order.

At the same time, a digital camera mounted on the display menu outside the restaurant snaps a picture of the car and driver placing the order.

The order travels back to the restaurant via the Internet and appears on screens in the kitchen and at the drive-through window.

When the customer gets to the pickup window, the employee handing out the food matches the order to the picture of the car taken earlier. (The images are later destroyed, Fields said.)

The idea is that drive-thru customers will get better, faster service when their orders aren't being taken by busy kitchen staffers. As our Keith Dawson says, it's probably too expensive for any single restaurant, but if you've got a number of them, it might work.

Proponents say that call centers can help boost drive-thru sales by making the lines shorter and what the Herald-Leader calls "suggestive selling," which we in the call center industry know as cross-selling and up-selling.

The local readers of the Herald-Leader were skeptical. One reader thought that having customers enter their own orders would be most efficient. Another thought this was the first step toward outsourcing fast food ordering to India. Many were wary of our increased reliance on technology for such simple transactions.

But is further automation at a fast food chain so bad, or so surprising? No one goes to Wendy's or McDonald's for cheerful, personalized service. We go to these joints for fast food. Good service (along with decent food) can certainly make a chain stand out. But if we're looking for a more intimate experience, we go somewhere where we have to park the car, right?

The New York Times covered McDonald's restaurants' foray into call center order-taking last April in an article called "The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order" -- our technical editor Joe Fleischer was quoted on that one. (And we blogged it: here.)

We blogged a similar trend in pizza delivery call centers last month ("The Strange World of Pizza Call Centers") after another article in which Keith was quoted: Pizza Marketplace's "Call Center, Profit Center," by Steve Coomes.

What do you think?