Chick-fil-A easing our pain
Fast food chain’s drive-through efficiency provides a bright spot during coronavirus pandemic
Amid all the coronavirus gloom, there have been human rays of sunshine.
I’ve written about some of the jobs they do that most of us take for granted, like driving trucks, collecting garbage, directing funerals and studying diseases.
I’ve wanted to write about one particularly crucial occupation, but it required getting approval from the corporate office. A representative thanked me for reaching out, but said employees are “heavily focused on making sure all operations are running smoothly.”
Too focused, she said, to spare time for an interview.
The occupation I wanted to write about was drive-through worker at Chick-fil-A.
Pathologists working on a new test for coronavirus could literally come out of a lab for an interview, but I couldn’t get 10 minutes with a kid selling chicken nuggets?
The blow-off made me more determined to call attention to that kid’s role in the War of 2020. And if you don’t think he or she is a hero, you haven’t driven by a fast-food joint the past few weeks.
Workers aren’t just putting on masks and gloves to keep us fed.
Amid all the upheaval, they are preserving a big slice of American life.
What would we have looked like if every McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell and Burger King had been shut down since March?
Okay, we would have looked leaner and healthier. But no fast food would have driven millions of citizens into an even deeper shutdown funk.
In times like this, we need reassurance, a smile and a milkshake. Fast food drive-throughs
have become vital in both the food and sanity chains.
I’m especially enamored with Chick-fil-A for a couple of reasons. I won’t name names, but its big competitor screws up my order 38% percent of the time.
“I said ‘Diet Coke,’ not ‘Sprite.’”
And Chick-fil-A is the best. Don’t take my word for it. QSR, a fast food industry website, consistently ranks Chick-fil-A No. 1 in its annual Drive-Thru Performance Study that measures speed, order accuracy and customer service.
Quick aside: Is it drive “through” or “thru?” Grammarians prefer “through.” Chick-fil-A spells it “thru.” Of course, its advertising cows also scribble “Eat Mor Chikin” on billboards.
Customers don’t care as long as they get their food fast, which can be a problem. The average drivethrough time for the top 10 brands was 255.34 seconds in 2019. Chick-fil-A was actually last at 322.98 seconds.
That was misleading.
“It’s more a good thing than bad,” QSR noted. “Put simply, the company’s speed of service is much longer because its drivethru lanes are busier than every other competitor—and it’s not even close.”
Two years ago, a Louisville franchise set the unofficial record of serving 178 cars in one hour. If 178 cars showed up in an hour at a McDonald’s in 2018, the last one would still be waiting for a Big Mac.
What is Chick-fil-A’s secret sauce?
If you didn’t know better, you’d think they are mass produced in some sort of top-secret Stepford Worker research lab at Chickfil-A headquarters in Atlanta. They are neatly groomed, unfailingly polite and cheerful.
“How are you, sir?” one young man said as I pulled into the drive-through/thru the other day.
Corporate office might stop me the reporter from interviewing workers, but it couldn’t keep me the customer from doing a little covert investigative journalism into the greatest assembly line since the Model T.
Chick-fil-A drive-through workers all look to be about 17.6 years old. They scurry from car to car typing in orders on their tablets.
There’s a lot of science in the drive-through game. McDonald’s has spent millions on artificial intelligence. It can recognize your car and predict what you’ll order based on previous trips.
Mine apparently tells AI, “He’ll say ‘Diet Coke,’ but he means ‘Sprite.’”
Chick-fil-A has techie stuff, but the human element is what really clicks with customers.
“Are you doing good, young man?” the next worker I encountered asked.
Young?
I love this guy. If I’d told him I had a crick in my neck, I got the feeling he’d have offered me a hot towel and a massage.
“How’s business?” I asked.
“It’s busy now with this situation,” he said.
Drive-throughs were busy before this situation, but now workers are wearing masks, gloves and have a hand-washing station behind the menu board.
I progressed toward the pickup window and asked the next kid if he was worried about coronavirus.
“No,” he said. “At least I’ve got a job right now.”
No teenage entitlement there. I pulled up to the window and peered inside. There were eight or nine humans going about their tasks with robotic efficiency.
For safety’s sake, there was a worker outside the window. His job was to hand customers their orders on a tray so they wouldn’t have to touch anything except their food.
I asked him what sets Chickfil-A drive-throughs apart.
“I like to say it’s my good looks,” he said.
I felt like hanging out a while longer, but that would have slowed the assembly line. In that sense, corporate headquarters was right.
Employees really are too heavily focused to making sure all operations run smoothly to stop for a chat. I took my bag of chicken nuggets and pulled away.
“Have a wonderful day,” the cashier said.
There haven’t been many of those lately for a lot of people. So on behalf of them, I’d like to thank Chick-fil-A workers for providing a fast-food lifeline.
And on behalf of me, I’d like to thank them for giving me a Diet Coke, not a Sprite.