Chick-fil-A plans to open a drive-thru-only restaurant in Hawaii this week. But it will do so in a manner befitting the Atlanta-based chicken-sandwich chain.
The company plans to open the location on Thursday in Honolulu. The restaurant will feature a dual-lane drive-thru and three walk-up windows for pedestrians.
The restaurant will also feature employees who greet customers, armed with a tablet, to take their orders face-to-face. Another employee will follow to take their payment. The company says this effort both increases the hospitality of the restaurant while allowing cars to move through the line more quickly than they would with a speaker box.
Chick-fil-A also said it is working with clothing brands that designed cooling vests and moisture-wicking uniforms to keep employees comfortable in the humid weather.
The local owner-operator is Zane Dydasco, who was raised on O’ahu just 10 minutes away from the location of the to-be-open Chick-fil-A. He was introduced to Chick-fil-A by one of his classmates in the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Drive-thru-only locations have become increasing popular in the post-pandemic environment as a lack of available real estate and high costs for that real estate have led many chains to look for more efficient restaurant designs.
With the bulk of fast-food customers now going through the drive-thru, and relatively few customers dining inside restaurants, drive-thru-only locations have become an obvious choice.
For Chick-fil-A, the drive-thru-only location is also a natural innovation. Its typical stand-alone locations generate more than $8 million and have been known for their heavy demand from drive-thru customers, with traffic often spilling onto nearby roadways or bleeding into neighboring parking lots. The location could help the unit generate a substantial portion of that $8 million on a much smaller overall footprint.
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