The Jodeco Road exit in McDonough, Georgia, looks like any other growing thoroughfare off a major highway, peppered with gas stations, a Starbucks, a Costco, a high school, new homes and more. Now it also has a massive and unique Chick-fil-A restaurant that’s visible from miles away. It has extensive directional signage at the entrance that could rival a small amusement park and four clearly marked lanes that run under and alongside an elevated kitchen.
That is Located about a half-hour south of Atlanta on Interstate 75, Chick-fil-A’s first drive-thru restaurant opens Thursday. The prototype has four drive-thru lanes — two for traditional drive-thru customers and two for customers who pre-order by phone, including delivery drivers. It also features an elevated kitchen that transports food to team members below via a “meal transport system.”
The restaurant was deliberately designed to meet high demand. The kitchen is twice the size of a regular Chick-fil-A kitchen and the food delivery system allows a meal to be delivered to a team member every six seconds. According to Jonathan Reed, the company’s design director, the restaurant – one of two test prototypes – is expected to reach at least twice the volume of a traditional restaurant.
“We believe it can do 2.5 to 3 times the volume of a regular Chick-fil-A. That’s the expectation,” he said during an interview at the restaurant this week. “This is a great area; the demand is there. We built this restaurant with a lot of horsepower. When we combine that design with a local owner/operator, we believe magic will happen.”
For those keeping count at home, 2.5 to 3 times the volume of a regular Chick-fil-A is a lot of volume. The company’s average unit shipments reached a record $9.3 million last year — an 8.1% increase from the previous record of $8.67 million reached in 2022.
More than just volume
In addition to producing higher sales, the restaurant was also designed to provide a better employee and customer experience. For example, the elevated kitchen and order processing areas below feature plenty of windows so there is plenty of natural light in these work areas. There is also a spacious lounge area for employees.
“We want to keep (employees) excited and engaged. We know that team member engagement is an indicator of customer satisfaction. You can calculate it. You can see it,” Reed said. “So we designed with purpose in mind and involved team members in the design.”
But the customer experience remains the north star for the company. Reed said the drive-thru channel, along with digital channels, accounts for the majority of Chick-fil-A’s revenue. Mobile-thru (mobile pre-ordering) is also growing: About 400 restaurants are online now and about 600 are expected to have the feature by the end of this year.
“We relentlessly pursue customer experience. We want our customers to feel like they have the best experience and we want to exceed their needs and that’s what we do every day. We look at what their needs are, especially in this channel and in this purchasing opportunity for speed and convenience, but never lose sight of the hospitality that is central to Chick-fil-A,” he said. “When they show up, we want them to feel the same hospitality whether they ordered through the app or in person.”
Although it is a drive-thru model, each meal is delivered to customers by an employee rather than handed out the window. The parking lot is for employees only, with the exception of customers who may need to use the restroom in the corner of the parking lot. Finally, the location is right next to a major highway. There are also special pullover lanes in case a customer needs to discuss their order with an employee.
The massive kitchen is home to the “transportation system,” where kitchen staff place the order on a tray and pass it along a conveyor belt to employees downstairs. The equipment “came off the shelf” but was customized to fit Chick-fil-A’s operating model, Reed said.
There is no set timeline for how long Chick-fil-A will test this prototype before making further decisions, including whether to build more such prototypes. Reed said the company will look at traditional performance indicators such as speed of service, overall satisfaction, accuracy, taste, etc. There will also be surveys of team members.
“We’re all about seconds and inches,” Reed said. “We believe that if we can meet customer demand, if we get the right feedback from our team members, if the equipment is doing what it’s supposed to do, if the food transportation system is doing what it’s supposed to do – if all of those things are right and the financial metrics are right at the end of the day, we’re going to get a good return on investment.”
In the meantime, Reed is looking forward to gaining some new insights from the prototype. For example, could some of these features be applied to other areas of the system? Could this restaurant offer more opportunities for collaboration between functions like operations and marketing? Will this meet or exceed changing customer demands?
“People’s time is a precious commodity. The fact that they come with their money, give us their time, give us their hard-earned resources, we never want to take that for granted,” said Reed.
Local owner/operator
The drive-thru concept is owned by Brett Lewis, who has operated the system in Dalton, Georgia since 2019. However, with this new restaurant, he is returning to his hometown—the restaurant is located 4 miles from his hometown. Lewis expects to employ about 150 full- and part-time employees at the new location.
Lewis has spent his entire career at Chick-fil-A. After high school, he started working at a local restaurant while working part-time at headquarters. He is also a graduate of the Chick-fil-A Leadership Development Program. Lewis’ mother, Melanie Farmer, worked at Chick-fil-A headquarters for more than 30 years.
“Local ownership, exceptional experiences, a meaningful brand,” Reed said. “When those three things come together, we succeed in the market.”
Contact Alicia Kelso at (email protected)
