Chick-fil-A is opening the first of its totally new restaurant concept that is designed to keep you on your feet
- Customers can only order sandwiches, fries and drinks via their mobile phone
- There is no seating – the point of sale is designed for customer pick-up and delivery rather than dining
- One of two new concepts; the other is a drive-thru with lanes running under the kitchen
Chick Fil-A is opening a completely new type of restaurant in New York City on Thursday – a concept that will be rolled out across America if it becomes a hit.
Customers can only order sandwiches, fries and drinks via their mobile phone, there are NO cashiers.
And there will be NO seating as there has always been at Chick-fil-A restaurants ā instead, it will be for takeout and delivery pickup.
The idea is that the customer ‘receives his freshly prepared order quickly’.
Since there is no parking, it will become a walk-up store for high foot traffic locations.
An artist’s creation of the cashier-less walk-up store, designed for high-pedestrian locations, opens Thursday in New York City.
With Chick-fil-A’s new concept for busy inner-city areas, customers can only order sandwiches, fries and drinks via their mobile phone. There is no seating
Chick-fil-A says the goal is for customers to ‘get their freshly prepared orders quickly’
Chick-fil-A says the restaurant at 79th and 2nd will target busy New Yorkers by focusing exclusively on delivery and mobile app orders for easy and quick pickup.
The concept is expected to be rolled out to other locations in the Big Apple. It will also land in other cities in America.
This new restaurant is one of two digitally focused test concepts that the fast food chain is opening.
The second of these is the elevated drive-thru concept opening later this year. See images below.
Chick-fil-A first unveiled the new drive-thru concept last year ā featuring a four-lane drive-thru, an upstairs kitchen and chutes to deliver food to customers.
The all-new design, which features lanes running through the center of the building, will debut in the company’s home base of Atlanta, Georgia.
An “advanced food transportation system,” consisting of a conveyor belt with chutes along the sides, will then deliver the chain’s famous chicken sandwiches to employees stationed on the ground floor, Chick-fil-A announced.
āDigital orders represent more than half of total sales in some markets ā and growing ā so we know our customers need convenience,ā said Khalilah Cooper, executive director of restaurant design.
It’s no surprise that Chick-fil-A is looking to expand its drive-thru offerings. The popularity of drive-thrus has increased by 30 percent in the three years to 2022, as customers choose to eat in the comfort of their cars rather than risk coming face to face with grumpy staff.
Experts say the boom is due to the pandemic, which saw people socializing less and increasingly avoiding face-to-face interactions with strangers.
It’s also no surprise that Chick-fil-A wants to accelerate the speed at which it serves customers. It was ranked as the LONGEST drive-thru restaurant, with customers waiting up to SEVEN minutes. Taco Bell was the fastest.
Customers of the chicken sandwich restaurant wait an average of 436.09 seconds – about seven minutes – for their order, according to a new study from QRS magazine. But it was ranked highest for good customer service.
The new drive-thru design is designed to accommodate the fast-food giant’s growing digital operations and will debut this year at a restaurant in the company’s home base of Atlanta, Georgia.
The elevated building gives the kitchen twice the capacity of traditional locations
The innovative drive-thru concept can accommodate up to 75 cars, according to Chick-fil-A
Other Chick-fil-A concepts have had problems. An attempt to build a “mega restaurant” with a playground and two drive-through lanes in a small Tennessee town was blocked by the city.
The fast-food chain wanted to build a 6,000-square-foot restaurant in the city of Collierville, about 30 minutes outside Memphis.
The new restaurant would have had a large outdoor seating area, a playground, an employee meeting room and dual drive-thru lanes with capacity for 43 cars.
Sam’s Club ā Walmart-owned rival Costco ā is using new camera technology that is dramatically changing its checkouts.
This allows customers to scan and pay for groceries using an app on their phone and immediately walk out.
Meanwhile, Whole Foods is launching stores for shoppers in a hurry – the new concept is a fraction of the size of regular stores and lets you pay with your hand using Amazon technology
And Costco announced plans to open a “showroom” style store for big-ticket items.