I’ll never understand the literal lines around the block for fucking Bigot-Chicken.
$0.02: I can’t prove it, but I think it comes down to the line itself being a mode of advertisement. You wouldn’t want to eat somewhere unpopular, and a hyper efficient drive-through would give that appearance. To blunt the impact of a deliberately slower drive-through, they put people out front* to greet customers so they don’t feel ignored in line. This in itself is something other chains don’t do and, instead, have to crush the drive-through line fast, just to keep everyone’s blood pressure in check. It’s better “customer service”, but as OP illustrates, places your staff out in the elements.
Meanwhile the food is bland and factory-assembly-line consistent, with toppings that range from bland to sweet and bland. Perfect for kids and adults that already have enough excitement in their lives. Are powdermilk biscuits on the menu yet?
(* if this is a corporate-mandated thing, it’s freaking brilliant. A manager can’t realistically pull one of the greeters to handle a kitchen disaster in the moment, since they’re outside. So, service in this regard is hard for management to screw up.)
It’s because assholes like the controversy and want to support the company. There was a time, long ago, when CFA legitimately had the only good fast food chicken, but those days are long gone. CFA is mid tier at best, so the only reason people would get in line to eat there these days is to own the libs
Man, I never missed the food even a single day since I stopped eating there around a decade ago due to the biggotry. It was always really greasy, and it made me feel like shit a half an hour after eating it.
Their hate sauces are delicious.
It’s cause.most people have no clue about that and ultimately don’t care. They aren’t engaged and aren’t seeking to be.
It’s fast, clean and decent enough to Garner a lot of customers.
Especially now that McDonald’s has the same exact thing. They even stole the bag. And are open on Sundays.
My go-to is rofo though.
This is one of the reasons I don’t get food from them or in-N-out. It may be illogical, but they tend to get a plot in a shopping center and take over a huge portion of the parking lot, pushing out customers from other stores in the shopping center. I couldn’t even get into the driveway to go to the grocery store one time because they were mis-managing the queue and had to go across town to the other store.
There’s a whole ass freeway exit I purposefully avoid for the same reasons. It’s a nightmare getting on and off because of a fucking chicken restaurant.
This may be conjecture, but I think that the reason that they’re so busy is because people think that if they don’t eat there then they won’t get into heaven.
can’t speak for the bigots, but as a non-bigot who buys it for my kids a couple times a year -
there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. i say this as someone who doesn’t shop at amazon or wally world, but it’s really difficult to avoid every single brand/company with an asshole owner/ceo. additionally, my impression is they are one of the better employers in the area for people who just need a job and lack skills/ability to do something else.
Fr it’s not even that good. People lost their shit about it so I tried it and I was super underwhelmed. So many better options out there.
The food does taste good, and it’s reasonably healthy for fast food, additionally they pay and typically treat their employees well.
All the people here talking about boycotting chik-fil-a, yet the “boycott” has been going on for almost five years now and it made literally no difference.
They’re way more likely to be affected by the right-wing boycott due to the company having a VP of DEI than a bunch of people that never ate there in the first place “boycotting” because of bigotry.
I mean, if you don’t mind/know about the bigotry, it’s pretty fuckin good chicken. And their waffle fries are good too. Haven’t eaten there in years and I do miss the food. But it’s still a hard no for me.
it’s pretty fuckin good chicken.
But is it “wait a fucking half hour or more in a god damned drive through” good? Fuck no it isn’t.
Evidently some people value their time less or the chicken more.
Every time Chick Fil A is brought up, ugh.
Oh no, do you cry and piss and moan every time someone validly critiques a business you just want to shop at without having to think about ethical considerations?
Someone call the fucking waahhhmbulance. So sorry that ethics are so hard for you.
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Try having small children; drive through a can be a lifesaver because you don’t need to unbuckle them, get their winter clothes on, get them into the restaurant, wait in line, order the food to go, then wait for the food, and then reverse the steps to get back into the car. It’s a giant PITA to just get some French fries, chicken tenders, and carrot sticks, let alone the drastically increased exposure to germs associated with a crowded restaurant. You may have heard, there’s a pretty bad wave of Covid, influenza, and RSV right now. Not sharing air with other people is a big part of staying healthy right now.
You’re assuming to get to a location you need a car, that’s still car-centric design. If your primary argument for drive-throughs relies on the fact that you needed a car to reach the location in the first place then you’re missing the problem.
The person’s point stands if they were on a bicycle. You can’t just leave a child in a bike carrier at the bike rack.
Not after that chewing-out by the police department, I can’t.
I mean their only point is really if the kids didn’t have their “winter clothes on”, which would be pretty unlikely on a bike, and I would think in a car, for the most part. I guess it depends where you’re going, but that still seems like it would be a good idea, just before you leave the house, generally. I don’t think walking into a restaurant, for maybe the minute from the parking space to the door, is going to be a more substantial amount of time, that you would have to have your “winter clothes” on for, compared to if you were entering any other building. I dunno, the tradeoff might be easier in terms of like, without winter clothes, it’s easier to get your kids to go potty or change them, but that’s kind of a moot point anyways, because most honda odysseys don’t have toilets in them, and restaurants do.
Waiting in lines is going to be a problem regardless of whether or not you’re in a car. It might be easier in a car, since you have more direct control of your children, but if you’re walking, a stroller would be the best analogue for that, and you should probably have that anyways, if you’re taking your toddlers for a walk.
It’s also not as though walkable restaurants can’t necessarily have outdoor ordering windows, hole-in-the-wall style, maybe helping to prevent the flu or what have you. If that’s a major concern, though, I think a mask would be a bigger help. Maybe not for kids, they’re kinda too gross for that. You could probably leave a kid inside of your little kid bike trailer, or kid’s seat on the back or whatever, while you walk up to the hole in the wall and order your food, since they’re in view the whole time, and that wouldn’t be very inconvenient. I would think the only problem would be if you were going inside. There are some cool options for bike trailer strollers, if you wanted to just detach your kids from your bike, and then just like, go straight inside, but that’s kind of a hassle, I haven’t seen a good one since they all have to be overbuilt bike trailers first, and strollers second. Someone might make a good amount of schmoney if they could really nail that concept.
In any case, all their points are moot and bad and cars are bad and dumb.
Can you imagine doing such scary thing as WALKING?
Like a peasant?
New american aristoracy I guess?
Putting a child in and out of a bike carrier is a ton easier compared to a car seat. It’s not really an issue.
Maybe but if I had a choice between the two drive thrus would be out of here
I respect your perspective but as a parent, trust me, life is really freaking hard as it is. Making it harder is unconscionable.
Not trying to downplay the right to your opinion but I feel like there has to be a better way to allow parents to enjoy options while also not making restaurants hostile to pedestrians
I absolutely agree with making more places pedestrian friendly, I just think a drive through makes too much sense to dismiss out of hand. Heck, I’m in favor of walk-up windows to better serve those of us who don’t want to go inside a restaurant even without kids.
I just don’t see how a pedestrian friendly place of business and a drive through can co-exist. Open to being proven wrong but as I see it, anywhere that incorporates a drive thru adds at least 3 areas where traffic intersects with customers in a dangerous manner: at the beginning, around the store and the unavoidable blind spot when leaving.
Not trying to take away from your ability to enjoy these things I just don’t think they are a good solution to a public place, as with anything car centric.
I don’t have images readily available, but there are little shopping centers surrounding parking lots where pedestrians go right from the sidewalks into the various restaurants/shops, if you can imagine a U shape for the shops and the parking lot and vehicular entrances inside the U. It just takes some planning and extra space, and you know, capitalism isn’t a huge fan of “wasted” space that isn’t generating revenue.
You may have noticed already that I disagree with your reasoning for using a drive-thru, but you are not wrong that they make life easier, and I’m not even saying that you shouldn’t use them. I’m just saying that kids can handle a brief bit of cold.
As a person who became disabled a few years back, I wish many, many more places would have drive through or order and pick-up without having to get out of your car. It’s a valuable service. I just think it’s over utilized by people who don’t need it, which is bad for the environment and not great for how little exercise people already get (walking from the back of the parking lot is not the end of the world, people).
The pandemic was kind of a lifesaver for a lot of us. Suddenly delivery options and order for pickup options have become available where we used to have to struggle to go into these places. It’s great. It’s not great for the environment or for most people’s health, but it’s great for those who really need it.
Sonic works well without the drive through needed.
They don’t need to be super bundled up just going from the car to the restaurant and back.
Tell me you live somewhere temperate without telling me where you live. Have you been to much of the US in the winter?
I agree with you and I live in Florida. I’d rather deal with the drive thru for the same reasons you listed.
Also, I won’t have to deal with trying to buckle a 2 & 4 year-old out of and back into their car seats, especially when it’s raining and 95*F. The 4 year old has ASD and refuses to be helped into the car so they throw a tantrum in the rain, and the 2 year old loses their mind just because.
There are things that people who don’t have/want kids can’t understand, and it’s an argument not worth having.
Understanding those things is why I don’t want kids.
I spent 5 years living in Alaska.
You’ve lived in Alaska for multiple winters and you aren’t worried about the problem with exposing small children to extreme cold?
You should see how the Finnish treat their babies. Things like frostbite and frostnip don’t happen in the few seconds it takes to get from a car to a door. Yes, with small children, those 10 or 20 seconds might turn into 60, but they will be fine.
A low temperature in Alaska will affect you MUCH differently than low temperatures in say, BC which is much more humid and cuts into my bones at -1 where in Alaska/Yukon I’ve handled -34 and I’m mostly struggling to breath.
As long as it’s a quick jaunt into a heated facility, it should be fine with some moderate layers.
These days I live in Washington, not quite as cold as BC but mostly similar. Previously, I have lived in the Northeast of the US and the Northeast of Japan, which are both humid and quite cold and windy in the winter.
I know winter.
Not in US, but it’s -18 outside right now, and I had no problem walking to my grandma’s home in -25 for 1km. This is not even Yakutia, but US is definetly not Oymyakon.
Temperature is in °C for you imperialists here
Why do you need children to wait in line with you? Are you in Soviet Union during deficit where there was a limit how much one person can buy?
Not sharing air
Give me another globe!
Why do you need children to wait in line with you?
Because letting toddlers run free around restaurants is asshole behavior.
It was more military focus than car focus. While in uniform the military isn’t/wasn’t supposed to run errands essentially, so they couldn’t get out of their cars. McDonald’s introduced the drive thru so that soldiers could grab a bite to eat without exiting their vehicles. Not that that is any better, just the reason that the first ones were even a thing.
Everyone else installing the things is definitely car-centric.
Damn, that’s the worst unintended consequence since employer-provided healthcare.
Employer provided healthcare happened under the Nixon administration, so this happened before that in the 50s
Employer provided healthcare started as a benefit during WWII because it was a loophole around wage controls.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/why-is-health-care-expensive-wwii-wage-controls/
I worded it badly. While it’s true that is when the process started, Nixon changed healthcare so that it could be for profit, which it wasn’t prior to that, thereby ensuring that healthcare and employment would permanently be tied together
I don’t eat chick-fil-A because of reasons but damn when I did they knew how to move lines fast. Also, the food is okay but it isn’t as good as people make it out to me.
I tried it a few times when it came to my area after hearing people rave for years, and I feel the same. It’s good, but that’s it. On par with KFC.
Popeye’s is way better in my opinion. It’s also cheaper, and the staff tend to be pretty entertaining in an unintentional and chaotic way. It’s the only fast food restaurant where employees are consistently very honest. Like, if they don’t have red beans because somebody fucked them up, I have been told exactly that.
“You get what you get. NEXT!”
Ngl the raw “you think I give a fuck about this job?” attitude their employees give off is super refreshing compared to the saccharine, focus tested to death, mandatory prompts that pass as conversation at Chic-Fila
I like the customer service and overall quality of the place, I’ve never seen a bad store. I’m not crazy about their chicken (Popeyes is better imo), it’s not the best but you’ll never roll the dice on whether you got what you ordered or if there is a problem. Also, from what I hear, they pay very competitively and take care of their employees (could be wrong).
I haven’t deliberately eaten there in years (occasionally I’ll have it if it’s catered or if everyone else wants to go), because they have really terrible politics and support things I disagree with.
Also, the place has a vibe I hate, like preppy kids mixed with a church function. It just feels fake, the smiles, the “my pleasure”, etc. it feels so fake it’s unsettling to me. I like Popeyes because while I have to check my order to make sure it’s ok, the person behind the counter is a normal person not a plastic cutout.
I’d put it on par with Wendy’s. Above KFC, but I still wouldn’t go out of my way for it. But I’ve also only had it at catered work functions when it wasn’t fresh, so I am a little biased. And fuck them, I don’t give bigot chicken my money, so I guess I’ll never know what it tastes like fresh.
At it’s best it’s fast food chicken. I’ll never understand the hubub.
Its closed on sundays(which is fun because they get contracts to operate in airports and throughway rest stops), and the owners have that whole anti gay thing going on.
its a Christian thang
That hate chicken is delicious and efficient, it’s a shame it’s anti-lgbt
What your favorite Chic hate sauce?
I mostly just liked their sauce, but that’s not enough to justify funding hate. The oppression leaves a bitter aftertaste.
I also like their sauce. If you care enough, you can make copycat recipes.
I am intrigued. Do you happen to know a good one?
I don’t have a specific one, but I’m sure that YouTube has plenty for the Chick-fil-A sauce and I’m pretty sure the Polynesian sauce, which I also really like, is honey French dressing
It’s too pricey for me even if it existed in my area, I loved the food but it was overcharged
The nearest Chick-fil-A to me is always super busy with cars going around the block. I have never seen them take orders from the cars that are waiting in line like this.
bigot chicken
GONG
You can see it in the photo, but it’s always bothered me how my local chic fil a built a nice covered spot for their workers to work with heaters and fans for temperature control and then I basically never see the workers actually work there. They all seem to work at the very beginning of the line, never patient enough to just let cars move up to them.
Why build it that way if you never use it (or aren’t allowed to)??
They go down the line during a rush to give the kitchen more time to prep orders.
And it works. The chikfila by my work I can get in and out of in 5-10 minutes regardless of how busy they are (barring the time when some chose blocks the drive thru exit and the manager has to come out and direct traffic to get the line moving). Compared to BK or McDonald’s who take 20+ minutes if there’s more than like 4 people in front of you. God help you if you try to go inside and theres an old person trying to order on the touch screen things.
That being said I don’t go to child fil a when the weather is shitty because of the workers being out in it.
Fuuuuuccccck Chikfila
And people in us say somethig about weather when talking about pedestrian infrastructure.
Yup. This is unintentionally c/fuckcars material.
Ugh I don’t understand why people wait in long drive thru lines… It is an exercise in stupidity, as well was waste.
Imagine all the gas wasted by all cars in north America just idling in drive-thrus every day.
Well you don’t expect them to park their car, get out of the car, walk across the parking lot, open the doors to get in, stand in line, place the order, pay for the order, wait for the order, then have to walk all the way back to the car (which would include opening more doors), just to have to get back into their car in order to eat. Seriously, who should have to suffer such indignity?!? ಠ_ಠ
I used to be a big fan of screw this I’m going inside, but it’s a mix now right? All the fast food restaurants have like one cashier now. Just because you go inside doesn’t guarantee that you push your order up in speed, you’re still waiting behind everybody else in line that’s ordered and now with so many places having two lines , you’re probably waiting behind half a dozen people even if you go inside and there’s no one there. You don’t even get the attention of the cashier right away because they’re busy helping fill drive-thru orders. If there are a bunch of people in line yet to order you could make some distance. But now you’ve got to try to park get in and get back out with the drive-thru line cutting right through the middle of the lot.
Also, the drive thru has a timer that the workers are scored on. Going inside doesn’t. They absolutely prioritize drive thru orders.
I used to work at chick-fil-a. Those things sucked. They were hot and smelled of body oder. It was hard to do anything in them.
I can’t imagine them washing that thing regularly
You imagine farting in one of those things
Only source of heat.
Fairly certain I don’t
And Popeye’s sandwiches are like double the size of Chik-Fil-A
And Popeye’s spicy actually is.
Wendy’s has the best spicy chicken sandwich.
People like to compare them, but they have such a different flavor when you order them plain like I do. The Popeyes ones are pickle-brined, so they have a faint taste of pickles with every bite. I can’t stand the flavor personally.
And the entertainment of seeing other people fight is better than anything chic fil a has to offer
I’ve read that the chicken Aldi sells in a red bag cooked in an air fryer is on par with CHICK-FIL-A. 🤷♂️
We got those, or some similar “it’s like chick-fil-a” chicken from there. I did not like it because it tastes like pickles.
I REALLY dislike the taste of pickles for some reason. I’ve seen people speculate that chick-fil-a brines their chicken in pickle juice, but either way if I get a sandwich of theirs without pickles, I don’t taste anything like I do with the store chicken. That goes for both the normal and the spicy sandwich.
I have experimented with similar recipes and pickle juice is the key to the taste and texture of chick fil a while brining.
pickle juice is awesome. pickles, pickle backs, pickles on sandwiches, everything. I feel sorry for gp
Rain hoods and bigotry.
I’ve never actually “been” to Chick-Fil-A, not even when I didn’t know about their shitty beliefs. Popeyes was always more convenient and tastes great. Now that I know, I actively avoid CFA.
I have tasted it when other people bring it in for work or something, and I still don’t get the hype. It’s just ok and definitely not worth waiting in a long line for when there are so many other options.
Edit: I don’t know if these even exist anymore, but some Popeyes have/had a buffet. If you find one of these glorious chicken establishment unicorns, please take advantage of it. You won’t regret it.
Lemmy is absolutely aghast at the idea of being outside.
That’s your takeaway? There’s nothing else about that image that strikes you as odd or dumb or depressing?
I think this is more about the employment uniform looking like a porta potty
Company issued rain gear not being fashionable doesn’t meet my definition of dystopia either.
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