Value meals at a fast$-$food restaurant Customers at a Burger King fast$-$food restaurant can buy food in two basic ways: a value meal or a la carte. There are five choices of value meals; each choice includes a sandwich, an order of fries, and a medium drink. The restaurant encourages customers to buy value meals by pricing them below what

the same order would cost a la carte. The value meal concept results in two benefits for the restaurant. First, it simplifies their inventory by reducing demand variability, which results in lower inventory costs. Second, it tends to take less time to deliver a value meal order to a customer than an

a la carte order. It$$s this second benefit that we examine in this example.