Chick-Fil-A’s New Elevated Drive-Thru a Perfect Fit for Louisiana
Life in Louisiana has most of us on the go from sunup to sundown and even into the darkness every day. Hardworking folks from New Iberia, Crowley, Opelousas, and Lake Charles get their eight hours (or more) in on the job and then head home to their families where they'll probably put in another full day of work. Somewhere in the "busy" of that business day, you have to find time to eat. Hence, the popularity of the drive-thru restaurant.
One of Louisiana's favorite drive-thru eateries is Chick-fil-A. The chain has been maligned in many communities because of the popularity of its drive-thru. A Chick-fil-A location in Lafayette was moved to a new location because it kept tying up traffic on a major thoroughfare in town. And other Chick-fil-A's across the country have had to revamp and remodel drive-thru patterns to avoid similar situations.
Apparently the Chick-fil-A brain trust has grown tired of listening to our gripes about the drive-thru and they have just introduced what could be the most innovative change in food-to-car transfer technology. You can see a picture of the new Chick-fil-A restaurant in McDonough Georgia. Like a lot of the houses in Delcambre, Louisiana, it's elevated.
The new drive-thru concept will feature four lanes for hungry customers to place and pick up their orders. The food will be prepared in the kitchen located above the drive-thru lanes. When the orders are received they'll be prepared upstairs and then transported downstairs via a conveyor belt system where team members will pass the completed order on to the customer.
Using this system Chick-fil-A estimates that they can have an order delivered to a team member every six seconds. The kitchen of the newly designed restaurant is two and a half times larger than the current Chick-fil-A kitchen configurations at traditional stores.
Will the new design make it to Louisiana? We can't say for certain but if this one in suburban Atlanta works as well as Chick-fil-A hopes it will then I would say you'll not only see the two-story trend make its way here but you'll see other restaurants adopting the practice.
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Gallery Credit: Scott Clow