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Every Chick-Fil-A you’ve ever been to runs like a fine-tuned machine. You can’t say you’ve gone to Chick-Fil-A and walked away disappointed with your order or your experience, if you did, you’d be lying.
Well, Business Insider conducted a survey and apparently, people have a complaint about the fast-food chain and I’m not sure I buy it.
The good news for Chick-Fil-A is that the 3,000 person survey found the king of the chicken sandwich as the cleanest fast-food restaurant in the United States. Fifty-five percent of the respondents agreed and I’d agree with them. For those wondering, In-N-Out placed second while Starbucks came in at third. Sidenote: Starbucks isn’t fast-food, maybe 1 out of 30 people that go there order anything other than a liquid.
Big shoutout to McDonald’s, Subway and Burger King as less than 10 percent of the surveyed folks cited them as the cleanest fast-food spots.
The bad news for Chick-Fil-A, if you want to call it that, is they were named the slowest drive-thru among fast-food restaurants in a QSR Magazine study.
The study concluded that on average, customers wait 5.38 minutes for their service in the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru line. McDonald’s was the second slowest with an average time of 4.73 minutes while Dunkin’ Donuts was the quickest at 3.6 minutes of wait time.
Here’s my very accurate take on this: the study is wrong. Also, who cares if Chick-Fil-A takes longer, the experience is always a delightful one.
Chick-Fil-A’s drive-thru is the most efficiently run process in the United States. It’s right up there with the functionality of Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s lines in New York City.
The line may look daunting during lunch rush hour, but that’s because their chicken and most importantly their sauces are like drugs. When said line looks intimidating, more often than not they either have an employee or an actual traffic officer directing traffic to make things as smooth as possible.
Most Chick-Fil-As have two drive-thru lines these days and I’m pretty sure they were the first to go that route in the fast-food business. The chicken people have it going on, folks. What an innovative idea to get people their meals.
Next up, you’re greeted by an employee in an alarmingly good mood with an iPad in-hand ready to assist you with your order. They’ll take your order, say my pleasure after every word you say, take your payment and tell you to have a blessed day. You then roll up to the window, snag your order from a person with a huge smile on their face and go on with your blessed day.
You then open your bag and the order is perfect. They didn’t skemp on the sauce, they didn’t forget napkins, half of your chicken nuggets aren’t in the bottom of the bag and you’re ready to roll.
If that experience isn’t worth an extra minute or two in the drive-thru line, I’m not sure what we’re doing as people.
It never feels like the Chick-Fil-A line takes forever to get through because the experience is always so great and you always leave blown away you got from the end of what looked like a 40-car line in five minutes and nothing went wrong.