It’s a bit premature to see a newly-opened Chick-fil-A drive-thru restaurant as a worrying trend, but a new two-story, four-lane operation that’s opened in the general orbit of Atlanta is certainly noteworthy for the near or total absence of the promo and drive-thru menu displays that are typical in the North American fast food business.
The new store in McDonough, Georgia has no dine-in and therefore no order counter with menu displays or self-service touchscreens, and instead of pre-sell and menu displays seen by motorists, there are staff members out in the lot taking orders on tablets.
The building has its kitchen on a second floor, and uses a conveyor belt system that lowers filled orders down to ground-level “meal fulfillment areas.” There are two lanes for people who used an app to order ahead (they check-in with the app once in the lot) and two more traditional lanes, where people can place orders with staff equipped with “line-buster” POS tablets.
Chick-fil-A has made it clear this is a prototype that exists to test ideas. Chick-fil-A has far fewer stores than other national brands like McDonald’s and Starbucks, but its sales per store have been described as “insane.” So what the company does is influential, particularly when a lot of its success is attributed to the quality of customer service.
This may well be too labor-intensive and expensive for most operators, and therefore not something that will be widely adopted or replicated. But it can’t be the best of moments for vendors who target displays and software, as well as deployment services, for the QSR industry, if that industry develops and expands a model that doesn’t use menu displays in the stores or the drive-thru.
Something to watch!