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It has been quite a while since I’ve done a Chick-Fil-Audit thanks primarily to Chick-Fil-A no longer making with the free bird when the Hurricanes win a home game which they did quite a bit of in the previous season and this year looks like they’re continuing that positive trend.

I can’t really blame Chick-Fil-A for doing so as the resulting queues the following day made their already notoriously industry longest queues through the drive-through even more heinous and that’s not even talking about how much that free bird had to be torpedoing the profit margins.

To be fair, Chick Fil-A still makes with the free bird but instead of ravenous Hurricanes fans, the free sandwiches go to those who truly need them so whilst it stinks getting the Chick Fil-A fix less often, it’s definitely better for the community as well as my currently panoramic physique.

But every now and then, a treat of free bird will pop into the app and this one turned up on 23 December 2022.

Yes…the last Friday before Christmas.

As much as I appreciated the gesture, I have to wonder if the person who pulled the trigger on releasing the free bird upon the hordes truly thought their way through all of the implications this would have with their restaurants that are already a menace to traffic and navigation and now you’re going to add the last-minute shopping crowds.

Yikes!

That being said, I decided to hit the Chick Fil-A in Crossroads right after visiting the Honeybaked Ham for our annual invitation of a bone-in half ham of their delectable swine to join us as dinner. Years ago, the visit to Honeybaked was often at least a hour to navigate their queues but now they’ve got it down to a science…order and pay online and get a window of time to come and pick it up. One QR code scan and a person running for the coolers later, you’re on your way. This year was slightly longer than usual at seven minutes from the time I walked in their door a little after 1030 until I was listing to the starboard thanks to an eleven pound guest of honour for the Christmas dinner table.

But enough of the squirrel moments…let’s see how Crossroads did!

• 1039 – Mobile order placed and we’re off from one end of the massive strip mall that is Crossroads to the other near Walnut Street where the Chick Fil-A is located. This seems easy enough until you realise that the main road between the strip mall buildings has two lanes turning left near Hobby Lobby to get to Chick Fil-A and Olive Garden but the outer lane that serves the restaurants gets clogged so badly that the inner lane is effectively useless.
• 1041 – The usable turn lane seems to be moving in spite of the long queue almost to Best Buy and we might well make it through with only one light cycle delay.
• 1043 – Oh, to dare to dream! Just got screwed by the yo-yos more interested in their phones rather than the empty lane and green light in front of them. Grrrrrr…of course, I don’t make it through and get an extra light cycle. Had I been smart about it, I’d have wound my way past Best Buy and Hobby Lobby and got the crosswise light which had very few cars when I first joined the tail-back. Ah well, live and learn!
• 1046 – Finally arrived in the queue for Chick Fil-A which is still decently long in spite of the early hour just switching over to lunch. Methinks this might be a harbinger of the “free bird effect”. The one poor kid enduring the brutal cold and windchill induced by 40-50 knot winds is struggling to turn the menu boards round from their breakfast menu to lunch and dinner. The menu board is acting like a huge sail and just when he thinks he has it locked down, it swings back and nearly takes his head off. Not terribly surprising, the usual army of order takers and payment people aren’t outside to manage the queue…maybe they’ll be out later when the queue is truly an insane length.
• 1047 – First time I’ve confirmed a mobile order at the speaker box since they introduced mobile ordering through their app. Kind of a weird experience and I’ve never been a fan of giving over my name to perfect strangers but she’s polite enough about it.
• 1049 – This drive through is a relatively tight squeeze and the choke point collapsing two lanes to one comes quickly after the speaker box. This location hasn’t been rebuild/renovated and given it’s postage stamp lot, I don’t see them being able to do anything about how little room they have to play with anytime soon. Bigger SUVs and trucks will have a real problem making that left turn toward the window 10m away without scraping something.
• 1050 – Window 5m away and the queue is moving quickly enough.
• 1051 – Arrive at the window, order received and I’m out of here.

Six minutes through the queue is shockingly good for the crowds already in Crossroads at that time of day and almost certainly a record for this location. It actually took longer to go roughly a third of a mile from Honeybaked to the Chick Fil-A than it did to get through the queue though that might not have been the case had I been more intelligent about avoiding the main centre road.

Let’s see how they stacked up!

• Initial greeting: The order taker was perfect without ever using my favourite greeting that I passionately despise!
• Order correctness: spot on for the full point.
• Waffle fries: the fries weren’t the warmest but they weren’t freezing cold either…I’ll knock off a quarter point here for the temperature.
• Sandwich: Sandwich was nice sized and properly breaded…full point! 🙂

Crossroads scores 3.75 points out of the possible 4…well done and that on a day that portended ill.

As I would eventually find out later, my experience was very definitely not representative of the IT meltdown and resultant chaos that would occur about 4-5 hours later when Julia and Ms Pat would take their turns through the queue from hell at their Garner Towne Square location.

And hell is probably the nicest description it gets…Ms Pat was forced to do two laps round the building rather than the usual one and Julia abandoned the queue and went in. As if the usual madness exacerbated by holiday crowds weren’t enough, they were having system-wide IT problems where people couldn’t purchase or redeem their gift cards leading to even more confusion and frustration all round.

Ouch!