I’ll never understand the literal lines around the block for fucking Bigot-Chicken.
I mean, if you don’t mind/know about the bigotry, it’s pretty fuckin good chicken. And their waffle fries are good too. Haven’t eaten there in years and I do miss the food. But it’s still a hard no for me.
it’s pretty fuckin good chicken.
But is it “wait a fucking half hour or more in a god damned drive through” good? Fuck no it isn’t.
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The streamlined menu makes it so the line goes pretty fast.
Even when it’s around the building it’ll only take 10 min.
Evidently some people value their time less or the chicken more.
I’ve only been to CFA a few times, but even with lines wrapped around the building I don’t think I’ve ever waited longer than 10 minutes. Burger King is regularly that long of a wait and I was actually stuck waiting 20 minutes at McDonald’s last week (they asked me to pull up and pretty sure they forgot about me.) I try to plan ahead and not rely so much on fast food, but as much time as I spend in my car driving for work, I’m usually stopping somewhere 1-2x a week.
They usually have double lanes and are taking orders throughout the line as shown above, the lines always long but seldom slow.
That said fuck bigot-chicken
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I’ve never waited more than 16ish min for food, and that is an extremely long wait for them. It is always super fast, so idk where you are pulling this 1 hour long wait time stuff from unless you are talking about their opening weekends for new ones.
In this hypothetical scenario, are there options other than McDonald’s to choose from? :-P
People turn everything so political. Is it worth waiting 1/2 for it? In my opinion no. I don’t boycott their product. I just don’t understand the obsession with it. It’s a chicken sandwich
It’s not that good anymore. IMO Wendy’s chicken is better nowadays
Popeyes spicy chicken is so much better than either.
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But then their fries are freaking disgusting.
Is the chicken even that good?, no way they don’t come from a CAFO. Stressed out chicken meat taste like water to me.
Idk what the hell everyone else is talking about. Their chicken has always been great. When i get chicken from other fast food places its always hit or miss, and even on their best day, it’s as good as chick fil a on one of their average days. Hell, I’ve never had a dry or overcooked or small portion of chicken from them, and they always pay their workers well.
It’s isn’t good chicken though. It’s not 2003. Every fast food place has better chicken now.
I found the food greasy and unsettling, but I live in a large city full of better options. I guess I can get why people in a small town may miss it.
can’t speak for the bigots, but as a non-bigot who buys it for my kids a couple times a year -
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. i say this as someone who doesn’t shop at amazon or wally world, but it’s really difficult to avoid every single brand/company with an asshole owner/ceo. additionally, my impression is they are one of the better employers in the area for people who just need a job and lack skills/ability to do something else.
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
the only valid critique in the thread.
Although I am a bit tired of it amounting to an excuse of not trying to do positive things at all.
This is exactly what people love using this argument for… It’s a toxic concept that if we can’t make a big enough impact, we shouldn’t even try.
I think one could correctly argue that this is one of the major things wrong with the world today. If we aren’t willing to fight injustice, how can we expect anything less from the world around us going forward?
In this case “fighting injustice” just means buying greasy chicken from the place next door. It’s such a pathetically easy thing to do. Better yet, go buy some discount raw chicken and make something cheaper, healthier, and better tasting at home.
In this case “fighting injustice” just means buying greasy chicken from the place next door. It’s such a pathetically easy thing to do. Better yet, go buy some discount raw chicken and make something cheaper, healthier, and better tasting at home.
It’s kind of proportional to the amount of impact people are making. Not only is the whole “ethical consumption” thing kind of like, oh, yeah, you’re fucked buying anything from anywhere, and working anywhere, because it’s a tangled web, but more than that, I think that most people are going to look at their individual contribution to chick-fil-a of like, ten bucks for a chicken sandwich meal, and think, hey, who gives a shit. And they’re not really wrong, successful boycotts tend to need to be spurned on by some sort of external action. If chick-fil-a was unionizing, and the union said to stop shopping there in the intervening time, you’d see that eat into profit margins a lot, something to that effect.
Everyone collectively kind of understands that individual agents are too weak to do anything on their own, spontaneously. Worse than that, they’ve internalized it, so it’s kind of turned everyone into stones that can only be shifted by larger, tectonic forces. It’s like voting, everyone (or most people) are conscious of voting strategies, to not “waste their vote”, and it is precisely this which takes away their power to vote. I can’t really fault them for this, though. You just kind of have to face the reality, bide time in your organization in the wings, and then kind of choose your moments, when you’re going to really push back at something.
Ethics are what you make of them. If it doesn’t bother you that this organization directly gives profits to organizations that dehumanize lgbtq+ people, then keep offering them your business.
In our society our purchasing decisions can absolutely have moral ramifications, and it’s not about the impact we may or may not have. Dan Cathy stood up 11 years ago and said the following on behalf of his restaurant in direct defense of giving money to anti-lgbtq+ groups, including those practicing conversion therapy:
“we’re inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage. And I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude that thinks we have the audacity to redefine what marriage is all about.”
To clarify further, Dan Cathy himself turned his chain into a symbolic beacon of religious zealotry and biggotry. It’s a symbol to many conservatives and bigots all across this nation. It doesn’t have to be that symbol to you, but to those of us paying attention, we may use a measure of contempt and caution when measuring up those who eat there.
I find the entire concept of being unable to try to be moral with our purchases positively dripping with intellectual dishonesty. Life isn’t about being 100% moral, it’s about doing our best with what we have. If we can’t avoid a greasy fast food chain for being a symbol of hate, then how will we ever foster true change in this broken world?
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
This applies more for corporations that own unavoidable infrastructure than restaurants with ample alternatives. The former would cost you a lot to forego and interfere with more effective praxis, while the latter costs nothing to support gay rights.
there is no ethical conumption under capitalism
I get this and understand to the point that I dont judge people too hard for just getting it out of convenience.
That said I feel like it’s an easy mark to boycott. At it’s best it’s just fast food chicken and the creators have an active hand in anti lgbt and weird religious fundamentalist stuff.
You don’t have to eat fast food AT ALL. You would be more healthy and you would avoid funding awful people.
my impression is they are one of the better employers in the area for people who just need a job and lack skills/ability to do something else.
We, like you, avoid what companies we can, CFA included, but this is often overlooked. The individual locations (franchises) are not equal to the anti-lgbtq+ corporate leaders and many of the ones here (Midwest) seem at the local level to better align with the community they serve.
And yet, their profits still go towards anti-lgbtq+ programs and organizations. And they still stand for biggotry, which was Dan Cathy’s intention 11 years ago when he made his dish on behalf of the company.
Yeah, and we don’t go there. I’m still able to recognize the nuance. You seem like you have good intentions but are kind of a dick.
I’ve had this idea kicking around in my head for a few years: Christian Chicken Offset Charity. It would be an app that would notify you “You appear to be patronizng a bigoted establishment, do you wish to make a $1 donation to Charity X to offset?”
Could work for Hobby Lobby, In ‘n Out, etc, too.
It would be so much easier to just not shop at those places.
But if you didn’t know about it in advance, that system would be useful
I don’t disagree, but:
- People are weak when it comes to comfort food
- Having this would create dialog about the problem at hand
- Propping up a successful charity like this might cause corporate to question its policy, whereas a boycott results in hard to measure fiscal impact.
Dan Cathy has no reason to question his biggotry. The conservatives in the United States made that clear by giving the chain record profits after he gave his speech, and after it came out that the restaurants direct profits were being donated to anti-lgbtq groups, including those that support conversation therapy.
Heres an excerpt of what he had to say: “we’re inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage. And I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude that thinks we have the audacity to redefine what marriage is all about.”
People like this need to shut up, or go die in a ditch somewhere so the rest of the world can see progress. The people that eat at this chain will always earn my contempt.
This isn’t how reality works. Offset is basically babble. What actually happens is company A does something actually harmful like poison the environment, pave some wetlands, burn down the forest and plant corn and then your offset goes to pay people with masters degrees to THINK about what they might do about assholes ruining the world.
On net assholes with masters degrees have houses in the burbs and the fucking damage is still done. If you want to offset harm you actually have to decrease harm not pretend to be offsetting it.
But Chick Fil A doesn’t do that anymore.
Oh, so the CEO uses their personal slush fund, which definitely doesn’t have any connection to the business they own and make money hand-over-fist from, to make the donations to the anti-LGBT organizations instead of making the donations through the company?
That must make it all okay then!!! /s
Don’t give these fucking pieces of shit any more of your fucking money, please.
Here here. People shouldn’t support monsters (or their organizations) that dehumanize others for the way they were born.
Greasy chicken isn’t doing anyone favors before this nasty realization, and there’s simply no excuse for it after. This is the smallest sacrifice any of us can possibly make.
For anyone still eating there: You’re weak, and you’re supporting cruelty. Do better.
Slim Chicken’s is better (I swear to god if any of you ruin Slim Chickens for me 🗡️)
The name doesn’t work if you eat a lot of their food. Does that count as ruining it for you?
In America, where chic and slims are? I wouldn’t bet on it ruining anything for them.
It’s because assholes like the controversy and want to support the company. There was a time, long ago, when CFA legitimately had the only good fast food chicken, but those days are long gone. CFA is mid tier at best, so the only reason people would get in line to eat there these days is to own the libs
$0.02: I can’t prove it, but I think it comes down to the line itself being a mode of advertisement. You wouldn’t want to eat somewhere unpopular, and a hyper efficient drive-through would give that appearance. To blunt the impact of a deliberately slower drive-through, they put people out front* to greet customers so they don’t feel ignored in line. This in itself is something other chains don’t do and, instead, have to crush the drive-through line fast, just to keep everyone’s blood pressure in check. It’s better “customer service”, but as OP illustrates, places your staff out in the elements.
Meanwhile the food is bland and factory-assembly-line consistent, with toppings that range from bland to sweet and bland. Perfect for kids and adults that already have enough excitement in their lives. Are powdermilk biscuits on the menu yet?
(* if this is a corporate-mandated thing, it’s freaking brilliant. A manager can’t realistically pull one of the greeters to handle a kitchen disaster in the moment, since they’re outside. So, service in this regard is hard for management to screw up.)
Man, I never missed the food even a single day since I stopped eating there around a decade ago due to the biggotry. It was always really greasy, and it made me feel like shit a half an hour after eating it.
Especially now that McDonald’s has the same exact thing. They even stole the bag. And are open on Sundays.
My go-to is rofo though.
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This may be conjecture, but I think that the reason that they’re so busy is because people think that if they don’t eat there then they won’t get into heaven.
This is one of the reasons I don’t get food from them or in-N-out. It may be illogical, but they tend to get a plot in a shopping center and take over a huge portion of the parking lot, pushing out customers from other stores in the shopping center. I couldn’t even get into the driveway to go to the grocery store one time because they were mis-managing the queue and had to go across town to the other store.
There’s a whole ass freeway exit I purposefully avoid for the same reasons. It’s a nightmare getting on and off because of a fucking chicken restaurant.
The food does taste good, and it’s reasonably healthy for fast food, additionally they pay and typically treat their employees well.
All the people here talking about boycotting chik-fil-a, yet the “boycott” has been going on for almost five years now and it made literally no difference.
They’re way more likely to be affected by the right-wing boycott due to the company having a VP of DEI than a bunch of people that never ate there in the first place “boycotting” because of bigotry.
Because it tastes really good. What’s not to understand?
Every time Chick Fil A is brought up, ugh.
Oh no, do you cry and piss and moan every time someone validly critiques a business you just want to shop at without having to think about ethical considerations?
Someone call the fucking waahhhmbulance. So sorry that ethics are so hard for you.
Nope. I don’t give a shit what their corporate overlords beliefs are. I still go get my chick-n-minis and hash browns like I do every other week because I like the way it tastes.They could be on the brink of bankruptcy from customers taking their dollars elsewhere and it won’t magically change what they believe.
Man this guy just out here advertising he sucks corporate boot because he can’t be fucked to give a damn about pesky externalities.
I think we just found a “temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”
I’m sure you do happily drive your Tesla to the Chick-Fil-A after shopping at Hobby Lobby for Nestlé products. Safe in the knowledge that they all love you and have your best interests at heart.
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Try having small children; drive through a can be a lifesaver because you don’t need to unbuckle them, get their winter clothes on, get them into the restaurant, wait in line, order the food to go, then wait for the food, and then reverse the steps to get back into the car. It’s a giant PITA to just get some French fries, chicken tenders, and carrot sticks, let alone the drastically increased exposure to germs associated with a crowded restaurant. You may have heard, there’s a pretty bad wave of Covid, influenza, and RSV right now. Not sharing air with other people is a big part of staying healthy right now.
You’re assuming to get to a location you need a car, that’s still car-centric design. If your primary argument for drive-throughs relies on the fact that you needed a car to reach the location in the first place then you’re missing the problem.
The person’s point stands if they were on a bicycle. You can’t just leave a child in a bike carrier at the bike rack.
Not after that chewing-out by the police department, I can’t.
I mean their only point is really if the kids didn’t have their “winter clothes on”, which would be pretty unlikely on a bike, and I would think in a car, for the most part. I guess it depends where you’re going, but that still seems like it would be a good idea, just before you leave the house, generally. I don’t think walking into a restaurant, for maybe the minute from the parking space to the door, is going to be a more substantial amount of time, that you would have to have your “winter clothes” on for, compared to if you were entering any other building. I dunno, the tradeoff might be easier in terms of like, without winter clothes, it’s easier to get your kids to go potty or change them, but that’s kind of a moot point anyways, because most honda odysseys don’t have toilets in them, and restaurants do.
Waiting in lines is going to be a problem regardless of whether or not you’re in a car. It might be easier in a car, since you have more direct control of your children, but if you’re walking, a stroller would be the best analogue for that, and you should probably have that anyways, if you’re taking your toddlers for a walk.
It’s also not as though walkable restaurants can’t necessarily have outdoor ordering windows, hole-in-the-wall style, maybe helping to prevent the flu or what have you. If that’s a major concern, though, I think a mask would be a bigger help. Maybe not for kids, they’re kinda too gross for that. You could probably leave a kid inside of your little kid bike trailer, or kid’s seat on the back or whatever, while you walk up to the hole in the wall and order your food, since they’re in view the whole time, and that wouldn’t be very inconvenient. I would think the only problem would be if you were going inside. There are some cool options for bike trailer strollers, if you wanted to just detach your kids from your bike, and then just like, go straight inside, but that’s kind of a hassle, I haven’t seen a good one since they all have to be overbuilt bike trailers first, and strollers second. Someone might make a good amount of schmoney if they could really nail that concept.
In any case, all their points are moot and bad and cars are bad and dumb.
Can you imagine doing such scary thing as WALKING?
Like a peasant?
New american aristoracy I guess?
Putting a child in and out of a bike carrier is a ton easier compared to a car seat. It’s not really an issue.
Maybe but if I had a choice between the two drive thrus would be out of here
I respect your perspective but as a parent, trust me, life is really freaking hard as it is. Making it harder is unconscionable.
Not trying to downplay the right to your opinion but I feel like there has to be a better way to allow parents to enjoy options while also not making restaurants hostile to pedestrians
I absolutely agree with making more places pedestrian friendly, I just think a drive through makes too much sense to dismiss out of hand. Heck, I’m in favor of walk-up windows to better serve those of us who don’t want to go inside a restaurant even without kids.
I just don’t see how a pedestrian friendly place of business and a drive through can co-exist. Open to being proven wrong but as I see it, anywhere that incorporates a drive thru adds at least 3 areas where traffic intersects with customers in a dangerous manner: at the beginning, around the store and the unavoidable blind spot when leaving.
Not trying to take away from your ability to enjoy these things I just don’t think they are a good solution to a public place, as with anything car centric.
I don’t have images readily available, but there are little shopping centers surrounding parking lots where pedestrians go right from the sidewalks into the various restaurants/shops, if you can imagine a U shape for the shops and the parking lot and vehicular entrances inside the U. It just takes some planning and extra space, and you know, capitalism isn’t a huge fan of “wasted” space that isn’t generating revenue.
Sonic works well without the drive through needed.
Why do you need children to wait in line with you? Are you in Soviet Union during deficit where there was a limit how much one person can buy?
Not sharing air
Give me another globe!
Why do you need children to wait in line with you?
Because letting toddlers run free around restaurants is asshole behavior.
It was more military focus than car focus. While in uniform the military isn’t/wasn’t supposed to run errands essentially, so they couldn’t get out of their cars. McDonald’s introduced the drive thru so that soldiers could grab a bite to eat without exiting their vehicles. Not that that is any better, just the reason that the first ones were even a thing.
Everyone else installing the things is definitely car-centric.
Damn, that’s the worst unintended consequence since employer-provided healthcare.
Employer provided healthcare happened under the Nixon administration, so this happened before that in the 50s
Employer provided healthcare started as a benefit during WWII because it was a loophole around wage controls.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/why-is-health-care-expensive-wwii-wage-controls/
I worded it badly. While it’s true that is when the process started, Nixon changed healthcare so that it could be for profit, which it wasn’t prior to that, thereby ensuring that healthcare and employment would permanently be tied together
I was going to a local place until they shut down out of nowhere that had basically the same thing as a drive thru, but for foot traffic (you could go inside, or you could go to the side of the building and order from a window at the sidewalk). I could imagine even in a fully walkable city that you can’t drive in would have “walk thrus.”
One of my favorite fast-food joints when I visited the states was Checkers. It was only walk-through and looked horrible to work in (Shed-sized building but one kitchen), but I liked the concept. It was easy to wander up, order food, chill, then maybe wander off somewhere else.
Without any cars to access or even reliably park (??), it was relaxing. A small slice of walker’s paradise where all of the scenery catered to our eyes instead of condensed seating areas surrounded by idling cars.
Weird. Checkers is usually a tiny building which is entirely geared toward drive-through orders and is rather pedestrian unfriendly in colder weather because it is all outside ordering and dining if you don’t want to use the drive-through.
Even weirder, because where I am every checkers is in a gas station, with a drive through on the side of the building. If that isn’t as car-centric as it gets, just shoot me.
This is the part I don’t get. I watched Chick-Fil-A build a new restaurant. Required all kinds of crazy drainage engineering to get into the corner of a larger parking lot. But throw in a covered drive-through on top of that? Absolutely not. They did build a kiosk for the drive-through, but could have just as easily built a second drive-through window and called it a day.
I don’t eat chick-fil-A because of reasons but damn when I did they knew how to move lines fast. Also, the food is okay but it isn’t as good as people make it out to me.
I tried it a few times when it came to my area after hearing people rave for years, and I feel the same. It’s good, but that’s it. On par with KFC.
Popeye’s is way better in my opinion. It’s also cheaper, and the staff tend to be pretty entertaining in an unintentional and chaotic way. It’s the only fast food restaurant where employees are consistently very honest. Like, if they don’t have red beans because somebody fucked them up, I have been told exactly that.
“You get what you get. NEXT!”
Ngl the raw “you think I give a fuck about this job?” attitude their employees give off is super refreshing compared to the saccharine, focus tested to death, mandatory prompts that pass as conversation at Chic-Fila
I like the customer service and overall quality of the place, I’ve never seen a bad store. I’m not crazy about their chicken (Popeyes is better imo), it’s not the best but you’ll never roll the dice on whether you got what you ordered or if there is a problem. Also, from what I hear, they pay very competitively and take care of their employees (could be wrong).
I haven’t deliberately eaten there in years (occasionally I’ll have it if it’s catered or if everyone else wants to go), because they have really terrible politics and support things I disagree with.
Also, the place has a vibe I hate, like preppy kids mixed with a church function. It just feels fake, the smiles, the “my pleasure”, etc. it feels so fake it’s unsettling to me. I like Popeyes because while I have to check my order to make sure it’s ok, the person behind the counter is a normal person not a plastic cutout.
I’d put it on par with Wendy’s. Above KFC, but I still wouldn’t go out of my way for it. But I’ve also only had it at catered work functions when it wasn’t fresh, so I am a little biased. And fuck them, I don’t give bigot chicken my money, so I guess I’ll never know what it tastes like fresh.
At it’s best it’s fast food chicken. I’ll never understand the hubub.
Its closed on sundays(which is fun because they get contracts to operate in airports and throughway rest stops), and the owners have that whole anti gay thing going on.
its a Christian thang
That hate chicken is delicious and efficient, it’s a shame it’s anti-lgbt
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I mostly just liked their sauce, but that’s not enough to justify funding hate. The oppression leaves a bitter aftertaste.
I also like their sauce. If you care enough, you can make copycat recipes.
I am intrigued. Do you happen to know a good one?
I don’t have a specific one, but I’m sure that YouTube has plenty for the Chick-fil-A sauce and I’m pretty sure the Polynesian sauce, which I also really like, is honey French dressing
It’s too pricey for me even if it existed in my area, I loved the food but it was overcharged
bigot chicken
GONK GONK
GONG
You can see it in the photo, but it’s always bothered me how my local chic fil a built a nice covered spot for their workers to work with heaters and fans for temperature control and then I basically never see the workers actually work there. They all seem to work at the very beginning of the line, never patient enough to just let cars move up to them.
Why build it that way if you never use it (or aren’t allowed to)??
They go down the line during a rush to give the kitchen more time to prep orders.
And it works. The chikfila by my work I can get in and out of in 5-10 minutes regardless of how busy they are (barring the time when some chose blocks the drive thru exit and the manager has to come out and direct traffic to get the line moving). Compared to BK or McDonald’s who take 20+ minutes if there’s more than like 4 people in front of you. God help you if you try to go inside and theres an old person trying to order on the touch screen things.
That being said I don’t go to child fil a when the weather is shitty because of the workers being out in it.
Fuuuuuccccck Chikfila
And people in us say somethig about weather when talking about pedestrian infrastructure.
Yup. This is unintentionally c/fuckcars material.
Ugh I don’t understand why people wait in long drive thru lines… It is an exercise in stupidity, as well was waste.
Imagine all the gas wasted by all cars in north America just idling in drive-thrus every day.
I used to be a big fan of screw this I’m going inside, but it’s a mix now right? All the fast food restaurants have like one cashier now. Just because you go inside doesn’t guarantee that you push your order up in speed, you’re still waiting behind everybody else in line that’s ordered and now with so many places having two lines , you’re probably waiting behind half a dozen people even if you go inside and there’s no one there. You don’t even get the attention of the cashier right away because they’re busy helping fill drive-thru orders. If there are a bunch of people in line yet to order you could make some distance. But now you’ve got to try to park get in and get back out with the drive-thru line cutting right through the middle of the lot.
Also, the drive thru has a timer that the workers are scored on. Going inside doesn’t. They absolutely prioritize drive thru orders.
Well you don’t expect them to park their car, get out of the car, walk across the parking lot, open the doors to get in, stand in line, place the order, pay for the order, wait for the order, then have to walk all the way back to the car (which would include opening more doors), just to have to get back into their car in order to eat. Seriously, who should have to suffer such indignity?!? ಠ_ಠ
And Popeye’s sandwiches are like double the size of Chik-Fil-A
And Popeye’s spicy actually is.
Wendy’s has the best spicy chicken sandwich.
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I can’t remember when I last ate a wet diaper. Maybe I should seek a Popeye’s to find out about this new wonder of international cuisine.
You don’t know what you’re missing. But I prefer the small business wet diaper over the fast food wet diaper. You want your wet diaper wetted by someone who enjoys wetting diapers for the quality.
I mean when you change a young baby’s diaper and you wrap it shut before throwing it in the trash it is wrapped sandwich sized and similarly warm.
People like to compare them, but they have such a different flavor when you order them plain like I do. The Popeyes ones are pickle-brined, so they have a faint taste of pickles with every bite. I can’t stand the flavor personally.
And the entertainment of seeing other people fight is better than anything chic fil a has to offer
I used to work at chick-fil-a. Those things sucked. They were hot and smelled of body oder. It was hard to do anything in them.
I can’t imagine them washing that thing regularly
Chick-fil-A minions*
The in-person order taking is a much worse experience for the customer. Let me look at the damn menu board. It should not take any more time to prepare a meal than it takes for a car to progress from the order board to the window. I don’t see how them getting the order earlier (presumably the purpose of this) is helping in any way.
If you want chick fil a and value your time, the in store pickup is a much more efficient.
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I do not want to be a CFA defender, because they really are shitty, but they have the logistics down to a science. The volume they push through a drive through puts other drive throughs to shame. To directly answer your question, the more they know about what orders are coming, the better prepared they can be. If they know the next 5 cars are ordering nuggets, they can put more nuggets and less patties in the deep fry (for example).
It’s terrible of them to make their employees do this shit in the cold and rain though. Just let the line be inefficient for a little bit, it’s not like the chicken craving cultists are going to leave the line.
Completely agree with this. They operate their drive through lines like a very well-greased machine. It’s extremely efficient and customers obviously have responded well to it. Would hate for CFA to ever militarize, they’d be a well-fed and very well-ordered militia.
They have a breathtaking modern technical stack at each franchise. They use ai camera tech to measure the “emptiness” of their various pans, which works with historical data and the incoming orders to automatically create store wide alerts about how much and when to add more chicken/etc to be cooked. They pull in tons of sensor data from basically everything in the stores to keep the lines moving, from the tills to door entry sensors to fry baskets, on and on.
Its all run on a small 3 computer cluster that each of 5000 stores gets that is redundant and self healing, and automatically shares data to corporate/etc.
For all the bigotry, its a crazy modern buisness.
Exactly, the kitchen isn’t some quantum superimposed space that can be made bigger to accomodate more sandwiches per hour, it’s not a fucking TARDIS or something. No, you have a max amount per hour, and not a single restaurant in the fucking country cares that there is an upper limit on what they can make. Nope, you, the workers, just need to move faster! Nevermind the limitations of physics, this is fast food and you’re a bad person for not being faster!
This has gotten even worse with the advent of internet orders. Go to your local Dominos and you may walk in just at the right time to hear the people at the counter losing their minds because five 20-pizza orders came in within seconds of each other, and every single one of those orders is expecting their order in “10-20 mins” because that’s what it said on the website.
The person whose order came in last is going to be waiting nearly an hour for their pizzas. Whose fault is this? Dominos corporate.
I can tell you’ve never been in a Chick-Fil-A kitchen during lunch rush. That drive through is one of the most efficient in the industry and the BoH logistics are about as good as you can get. Most restaurants do over 200 cars per hour. They have significantly more employees making a much better wage than the industry average allowing them to meet the demand.
I fucking hate Chick-Fil-A for a lot of reasons, but you can at least be factual about your criticisms. Pizza isn’t even in the same league as other fast food, and is basically irrelevant. Low margin and low volume lead to most pizza places not having enough staff to handle a rush of orders.
I have the advantage of having worked on the corporate side of a lot of different restaurants, so I have a lot of behind the scenes knowledge. I have nearly 20 years combined experience between Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, and now Chick-Fil-A. That’s probably why I don’t eat fast food anymore.
You imagine farting in one of those things
Only source of heat.
Fairly certain I don’t
As a non American: What are these people doing? Only time I’ve seen fast food personal outside around here is to empty the bins and pick up trash from the parking lot. Otherwise they are inside.
They take the orders on iPads 80% instead of having you drive up to the speaker.
I think they do this to keep the kitchen constantly moving instead of waiting for an order to get finished. Also a personal touch.
Also a personal touch.
if i ever want or need this from a fast food place please find me and shoot me
Welcome to Chick-fil-A, I love you
The early days of drive in was waiting in your car in the parking lot and wait for a server to come out to you to take your order. Then they return to your car with the food for you to eat in your car in the parking lot. They often had trays that hooked onto your window or trays that would sit in your lap to eat from. This food was diner style food and wasn’t quick to make like fast food today is.
These styles of restaurants fell out of style when cheap and quick fast food came along. This combined with Americans are usually only interested in the latest things or styles, many of these old style restaurants went under and disappeared into history. The Founder movie covers some of this when the McDonald’s brothers came along.
The ones that didn’t die like A&W adopted the eat inside model with a drive thru window for pickup abandoning the older model where their waitresses would roller skate out to your car to take your order and deliver food.
Then there are newer chains like Sonic in the US that have this old style pull up parking and a drive thru with outside seating. This is more of a nostalgia play for consumers and it worked as it was a trip to something that wasn’t around anymore so it was new again.
I assume this Chick Fil place is doing something similar in this photo or they are just delivering food during the pandemic to people that preordered ahead of time in the rain.
Chick-fil-A has a more or less normal drive through. You drive your car through and get the food at a standard pickup window. The people outside are taking orders on ipads, but not delivering food.
They are literally taking orders. They don’t deliver your food. Their drive thru ordering is literally hell.
Kind of reminds me of Dutch Bros. Coffee. They have people out in the line for the drive thru with iPad taking orders. By the time you get to the window the orders are ready for pickup.
I’ve never actually “been” to Chick-Fil-A, not even when I didn’t know about their shitty beliefs. Popeyes was always more convenient and tastes great. Now that I know, I actively avoid CFA.
I have tasted it when other people bring it in for work or something, and I still don’t get the hype. It’s just ok and definitely not worth waiting in a long line for when there are so many other options.
Edit: I don’t know if these even exist anymore, but some Popeyes have/had a buffet. If you find one of these glorious chicken establishment unicorns, please take advantage of it. You won’t regret it.
The reason those guys are out there is to make sure there aren’t long lines. I hate the way it is set up but I have to give them credit that they can get people through faster than any other fast food joint around. They make McDonald’s look extremely slow at times.
I agree, even when the line is wrapped around the building the wait rarely is ever that long.
And I know this is just pissing into the wind in this community, but CFA is amazing in my community. Yes, Popeyes sandwich is better, but the service level is next level at CFA. They pay well, treat their employees great (see photo), and they give back to the community. When the local owners were renovating their stores they went out seeking volunteer opportunities for their employees, them paid their employees for the time they spent volunteering. Plus the employees are just nice… compare that to the Popeyes employees who obviously hate being at work, are understaffed, and underpaid.
Yes, CFA has issues at the corporate level but on the local level it is an amazing employer and member of the community.
We have a local gang organization that does charity drives. Even if some of those individuals promoting a good public image weren’t involved, the organization goes as far as trafficking young children. Grew up around it unfortunately. Yet ironically, I have people vehemently defend them as arbiters of good like they’re vigilantes or something because they haven’t seen what radical effects these people are pushing into our world.
That’s much further on the scale of course, but we can ask the same question still: Is the good that this one meso-group supplies negate the evil that they’re supporting?
Could all of these wonderful people be working at another facility, providing you with the same quality of service minus the bad moral after-taste? Yes, but only if they’re obligated to work somewhere else. Otherwise, why change when they’re getting so much support from the people they serve?
Yeah, that’s fair.
Newer shake shacks do the same thing with the double drive through and roving CSAs, but im pretty sure they just cloned chick-fil-a’s process.
