Being at a bit of loose ends after retrieving Julia’s van from the garage, I thought I’d pop through the Chick Fil-A at Brier Creek to get a bit of nosh prior to doing a bit of airport therapy at the RDU observation park.
Brier Creek has long been the definitive standard of efficient service with arguably the most intelligently designed drive-through in the area. You can do the traditional route with the order takers or if you’ve already put in your order through the mobile app, you can enter a queue with a series of QR codes that you scan in the app and it attends to checking you in so you can just proceed on through the drive through.
But enough of the squirrel moments…let’s see how Crossroads did!
- 1345 – Mobile order placed whilst sitting in the conga line waiting to turn left out of Fred Anderson Toyota on US-70.
- 1350 – Arrive at Brier Creek location which now has a convenient left turn from Lumley before the light at Brier Creek. I have no doubt Chick Fil-A had the clout to push that through planning at lightning speed and it’s so nice not having to do the U-turn at a busy intersection!
- 1350 – QR code scanned and I’m already making the turn round the building.
- 1352 – Food already delivered at the window and I’m in the departure pattern!
I’m dead serious…two minutes from the time I arrived in the queue to the time the food is already aboard and I’m heading for the exit.
It took about a minute longer for me to actually put the order through their mobile app and thumb the payment via Apple Pay than it did for me to go through the drive-through queue!
That is easily the fastest I’ve ever been through a Chick Fil-A queue and it’s not like they weren’t still busy with the tail end of the lunch rush!
Wow!
Let’s see how they stacked up!
- Initial greeting: Didn’t really have one as the first person I met was the person delivering the food but she gets full marks for “hey” not being the first word out of her mouth! 🙂
- Order correctness: spot on for the full point.
- Waffle fries: hot and fresh, just the way they ought to be! Full point!
- Sandwich: Sandwich was nice sized and properly breaded…full point! 🙂
Brier Creek scores all four points and frankly deserves a bonus point for fastest trip through the queue I’ve ever known!
I’ve noticed that generally the queues have been moving along nicely at the spots I’ve typically frequented of late which is White Oak and Knightdale.
Knightdale in particular has improved operations markedly and are consistently in the 5-6 minute range which is the average time through the Chick Fil-A queue nationally.
When I’m in the mood for the Lord’s bird, I’m already expecting the trip through the queue to take longer than you’d normally expect in a fast food joint but it’s usually worth it because the food and the lemonade really rock and most of the time the people you encounter in the queue aren’t jerks.
But when it comes to flat out fast and still hot and tasty, no one touches Brier Creek. Whilst this would be the quickest ever trip through the queue, Brier Creek typically averages 3 minutes from arrival to departure fairly consistently.