Chick Fil-A is testing a new strategy that would hopefully cut back its long lines at the drive-thru's. Long lines at the drive thru's is where the fast food chain makes majority of its revenues, as reported in Buzzfeed.com. The answer to long lines? The building of an "innovation center." This center was built on January of this year.
In the center, a foam board was used to encourage people to move things around in design walk throughs to better accommodate long lines while the renovation of the actual store is still underway, according to Buzzfeed.com. Models in studier walls in actual equipment make it difficult to for the renovation of the center to be completed as soon as possible.
Senior director for design for Chick Fil-A, Dwain Cox, said:
"Once you get those [foam] pieces made, it's like Legos. We want them to be able to temporarily step outside of what they know and move into a world of 'what could be.'"
Stafford Green, an entrepreneur, describes the "innovation center" as follows:
"It's a cool space where you can do wacky things. It has the feeling of a true incubator, which a lot of companies are trying to have."
The innovation center is where the plans of building almost 100 new stores for Chick Fil-A starts for 2016. Hopefully, the innovation center is where models for expanded stores and drive thru's would start to be built up upon. For one thing, the kitchen is getting a major overhaul renovation.
A manager of Chick Fil-A's kitchen design, Eric Stogner, said:
"Every foot does matter. If we eat up three feet here, we have to find three feet somewhere else. That could be a row of parking spaces that just got sacrificed."
The previous version of the innovation center, "The Hatch," was not enough anymore to support the growing business needs of Chick Fil-A. Hence, there was a need to expand the support services for Chick Fil-A's renovation needs.
In the innovation center, there is a 35,000 feet model service that tests the feasibility of the stores' facilities' functionalities. One of the proposed ways to quicken drive thru services as proposed in the innovation center is this: have drive-thru workers walk over to drivers to take orders using a tablets, instead of waiting for the drivers to give out their orders through the speakers.
This strategy would definitely help at the Memphis, Tennessee stores. As reported in Bizjournals.com, Chick Fil-A has got one of its busiest stores in its Memphis facilities.
Murfreesboropost.com, though, reported that a Chick Fil-A old fort parkway franchise has made efforts to improve the drive thru situation in its store by using a mobile equipped headset in taking orders from customers.
