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Everyone knows that Chick-fil-A’s drive through lines are rough. In fact, there are several Reddit threads dedicated to the topic and they’ve even been named the slowest fast food drive-thru in America for *at least* three years running. So–why is their CEO actually bragging about the wait times? Customers are so mad about the recent development in the Atlanta-based chains drive-thru drama.
In case you missed it, in a recent interview, CEO Dan Cathy revealed, “We estimate about 30% of the people are driving off, driving away, because the lines are so long,” in reference to the restaurant’s super long drive through lines. His remarks to Atlanta Business Journal on September 16th come on the heels of the restaurant being voted the slowest drive-thru experience of all the fast food chains by customers, and trade publication studies. QSR, which conducts an annual study, concluded in their 2021 report that the Chick-fil-A drive-thru is by far the slowest, with an average wait time of 9 minutes. Yikes!
While many national food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King used AI and other technologies to evolve their food service models in 2020 and 2021 amid dining room closures and other Covid-related factors, Chick-fil-A is seemingly turning their nose up to solutions that could make 1/3 of their customers happier. Ouch–that one hurts, guys.
As increased demand for take out and contactless order in Covid has driven their competitors to turn old ways of doing things on its head, but ZDNet points out that Chick-fil-A seemingly hasn’t done much anything technology-wise to get food into diner’s hands faster. In fact, Cathy said all they’ve done is open more locations–to no avail. “We found that doesn’t solve the problem,” he admitted. How is this OK??
And not only that, but Chick-fil-A is also one of the U.S. food chains currently being sued for alleged price hikes on its delivery orders. And you thought their politics were bad!
