> Being hungry, going into McDonalds and seeing what they had on the shelf ready to eat now. Bic Mac, Quarter Pounder or maybe 2 Hamburgers.
I get what you're saying, but a downside to what you're describing is guaranteed waste of food. If food is prepared based on expectations, there's no way that all the food will be ordered before it goes cold/end of hours, and has to be dumped.
Not necessarily. Restaurants are nuts to get food waste down (I used to work in house at a large corporate chain and 80% of what the dev team did revolved around inventory tracking, and figuring out how to minimize unsold food).
If you sell 80-150 hamburgers at the lunch rush, front loading 70 so there’s a bunch at the start is fine.