By Katherine Tinsley
2:11pm PST, Feb 3, 2025
According to the Wall Street Journal, drones found that a busy Rockford, Ill., location was able to serve a customer every 13 seconds.
Despite the shocking speed, the restaurant's operator, Philip Everett, believed he could reduce the serving time.
"We hadn't understood half of what our different challenges were," Everett told the outlet.
While studying images of his team, Everett was surprised by what he noticed.
Everett realized one employee — who was overwhelmed with drive-through duties — and the Wi-Fi used in the parking lot needed to expand further out, as the technology limitations were slowing down orders.
"Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A is on the vanguard of fast-food drive-through science, regularly dispatching specialist teams to its more than 3,000 restaurants to study the minutiae of parking-lot traffic patterns and how employees hand off orders," the article reads.
Chick-fil-A is famously closed on Sundays due to its founder's religious values, but it still managed to be the highest-earning fast food restaurant in the nation.
Chick-fil-A reportedly earned $21.6 billion in sales back in 2023, and last year, around 60 percent of its purchases occurred in the drive-through.
Chick-fil-A isn't the only corporation feeling the pressure to perfect their efficiency, as McDonald's is experimenting with their new space-themed restaurant, CosMc's.
Despite the convenience of Uber Eats and other food delivery services, about 43 percent of fast food is ordered in a drive-through, resulting in $140 billion in annual sales.
Due to its popularity, Chick-fil-A locations are often packed with hungry crowds, loud honking from car horns and irritated neighbors.
"Once you get started, it's only a matter of time before there will be another and different bottleneck," executive Will McFaddin, who took on improving their ordering system in 2017, shared.
S. Truett Cathy, who owned a diner in Georgia, was intrigued by McDonald's and other restaurants. Once a poultry supplier sold the businessman his surplus of chicken, the concept of Chick-fil-A was born.
Cathy decided to experiment with frying chicken cutlets in a high-pressure fryer and managed to cook the meat in minutes. Cathy later decided to open up the first Chick-fil-A at Greenbriar Mall in 1967. However, after decades of finding success in food courts, Cathy pivoted into embracing the drive-through model to help grow his brainchild.
