When Taco Bell debuted its four-lane drive-thru idea in 2022, it appended a daring identify to the design: Taco Bell Defy, so named as a result of it defies clients’ expectations with superior expertise and revolutionary upgrades. 

One such improve was the notion of an “elevated” design, the place the kitchen sits above the drive-thru lanes and ferries meals to the ready vehicles down beneath. This week, Chick-fil-A opens its personal model of the quick meals phenomenon in McDonough, Georgia, one which goals to hurry up service for visitors and create a extra frictionless ordering expertise. 

The McDonough Chick-fil-A has options you would possibly by no means have seen in a drive-thru earlier than. For one factor, there’s an archway instantly upon coming into that divides cellular drive-thru from common drive-thru, the previous being for these selecting up an order they’ve already positioned within the Chick-fil-A app. The respective lanes break up off for his or her respective ordering procedures, then funnel right into a central hall shaded by the huge restaurant construction sitting atop it; that is the place vehicles idle whereas the meals is being ready. The kitchen above fulfills the order, sends it down a conveyor belt to the bottom stage, and workers ferry the meals from the conveyor belt to the ready car. 

The kitchen above the 4 drive-thru lanes is twice as giant as that of a traditional Chick-fil-A, whose kitchens should match inside a blueprint that additionally prioritizes a big eating room house. Since this design has no eating room to talk of, the sq. footage can go nearly totally to kitchen house. 

Jonathan Reed, government director of design for Chick-fil-A, instructed Meals & Wine that McDonough, an space south of metro Atlanta, was chosen because the pilot website for the elevated restaurant due to the realm’s bustling commuter inhabitants, its proximity to the Chick-fil-A Company Assist Middle, and the truth that it merely had sufficient house to deal with a multi-drive-thru-lane idea.

The design was first unveiled in July 2023, when government director of restaurant design Khalilah Cooper instructed Nation’s Restaurant Information, “We’re evaluating clients’ expertise. Does it really feel straightforward? Does it really feel seamless? Can they navigate this simply? Are we giving them time again?” Now, as the primary elevated location opens to the general public, Reed notes within the press launch, “We’re aiming to ship high quality meals and real hospitality in a method that’s uniquely Chick-fil-A, and provides our visitors time again of their day.”

Clearly, “time again” is a recurring theme — and one with profitable implications for any quick meals chain that may get it proper. Within the drive-thru lane, shaving mere seconds off clients’ whole transaction time can have seven-figure implications on a steadiness sheet, because it permits extra clients to stream by means of the ordering course of. That’s why so many chains are at the moment emphasizing pace as a marker of success; a number of chains are even testing out AI voice drive-thru tech as a approach to preserve issues shifting. 

“The meals conveyor system permits for a meal to be delivered to a Workforce Member each six seconds,” Chick-fil-A says of its new design. “Nevertheless, hospitality stays a focus. Company will proceed to get the service and care that they know and love by means of a straightforward, drive-thru-focused expertise.”

That conveyor belt, by the way in which, is a characteristic that required a little bit of tinkering. “Given the kitchen is elevated above the drive-thru created hurdles for us within the sense that we wanted to ensure the distinctive meals transport system was designed in a method that’s intuitive and straightforward for our group members to study but in addition permits for a meal to get all the way down to our group members shortly,” Reed instructed Meals & Wine.

Along with the brand new elevated restaurant idea, Chick-fil-A rolled out one other new design this yr: a 400-square-foot grab-and-go spot in New York Metropolis. That one is arguably an much more radical disruption of the quick meals establishment than the elevated kitchens as a result of it’s meant solely for cellular order pickup; in McDonough, you will have the choice of selecting up a preordered meal or deciding on objects from the menu boards on website. There are not any menu boards on the new Manhattan mannequin. There aren’t even chairs. 

And this isn’t even the one information to interrupt about America’s third-largest fast-food chain this week. Deadline stories that Chick-fil-A is at the moment planning a leap into the leisure business, launching its personal streaming platform stuffed with authentic and purchased programming. The emphasis seems to be on “family-friendly” reveals, which, given Chick-fil-A’s entire deal, makes all an excessive amount of sense. (By the way, don’t even take into consideration making an attempt to go to the brand new elevated kitchen on a Sunday.)