Chick-fil-A’s First New York Location Will Take Customer Orders In A Whole New Way

With Chick-fil-A gearing up to open its first New York City location, the company will introduce a new ordering system to the restaurant. The chicken-themed fast food chain will be utilizing tablets to speed up the waiting process for patrons, NRN reports.

While customers are in line, servers will take their orders with tablets and send the requests straight to the kitchen. Each customer is given a different colored tag for their specific order which they’ll use to pay at the register. Once the order is paid for, customers are handed a vibrating pager that alerts them when their order is cooked and ready to be picked up.

This process is similar to how other fast food chains like McDonald’s and In-N-Out handle busy drive-thru hours, minus the pagers.

Chick-fil-A tested its new system at a Chicago location and discovered that it reduced customer wait times from 10-15 minutes down to 4-6 minutes.

Optimistically, with eight crew members taking tablet orders for the restaurant, 100 transactions can be made within each hour.

While the method won’t hit every Chick-fil-A location, it will debut in at least 30 urban restaurants that don’t feature a drive-thru. This includes mall locations and spots with high-volume traffic.