I haven’t been to my local Chick Fil A in a while but I stopped there today for lunch. I drove to the drive thru and an employee was walking toward my car holding a menu and a pad of paper. I figured the speaker must be broken so they were doing it manually but she told me that it’s their new “face to face” ordering. She then asked me if I needed to see the menu or if I already knew what I wanted.
After ordering she wrote down “CG” on a slip of paper and told me to take that to Tom around the corner. Tom took it from me and used his radio to confirm w/ the inside the price. He wrote $3.50 on the slip and gave it back and said to hand this to the cashier. I paid and drove away w/ my food.
I’m still not quite sure if I like this method of ordering. I guess they’re trying to recreate the “indoor” ordering experience at the drive thru. I’m more concerned about speed and accuracy of my order though. But I will say, the line did keep moving today so I have no complaints!
Plus their Chargrilled Chicken Sandwich rocks haha
MacDork says:
Yeah: not too sure about that Face to Face service. It sounds sort of convoluted, but if it’s getting you out of their line faster than before, it can’t be all bad. Chick Fil A has always been kind of quirky, though: the whole not-open-on-Sunday deal, for example.
28 June 2008, 8:01 ampenut says:
I hear ya. The whole closed on Sundays thing sucks when you’re craving their waffle fries or their iced tea on Sunday.
29 June 2008, 9:05 pmCB says:
I actually think the not open on Sunday thing is cool. Stinks that you can’t eat their food, but shows what’s important to the guy…love you baby!
3 July 2008, 10:34 amJustin says:
I work for Chick-fil-A and we do this type of ordering for the lunch hour. Normally if our store does traditional ordering methods, we can squeeze out just barely 90 cars between 12 and 1. But using the Face-to-Face method we can get over 120 cars per the hour. This is to keep the line moving. People do say that it seems like a hassle and that we don’t move any faster, but think of it this way. If your at the end of the drive thru line would you rather wait for 7 cars to put their order in or have your put in where your at and not have to wait for everyone ahead of you? The only reason we do this is to keep the line moving. It’s better than having someone at the speaker going “ummmm I would like *pauses*.” And its also to get more personal with our customers. Thank you for understanding.
21 May 2009, 2:33 ampenut says:
Thanks for the reply Justin. I’m all for the face to face ordering if it pumps more cars through the line!
21 May 2009, 11:44 amblasianFMA says:
One time, maybe last summer, I went to a Chick Fil A and they were doing some sort of variation of this. I think their speaker was really broken though because it was quite…. ghetto… for lack of a better term. The girl who took my order outside was using her cell phone to talk to the people inside. I asked her if she was really using her day time minutes for the company. She just laughed.
17 September 2010, 1:58 pm