---

You know the drill…another Carolina Hurricanes home win, another free Chick Fil-A sandwich complete with a run through the conga line!

That makes their home record 25-5-4 through the end of March and I think I’ve only missed two of the free sandwiches…one from not being able to muster the energy to endure the queue and the other I forgot to log into the app by midnight.

Time to do some maths, shall we?

The sandwich goes for $4.15 plus $0.34 in the Governor’s tax and I’ve managed to score 23 of them so far which comes out to $103.27 in free Lord’s Bird.

If the Hurricanes keep winning like this and Chick Fil-A keeps making with the bird, they may well have to send out 1099-MISC forms to us soon! 😉

So I find myself wandering to the Garner location at Timber Dr and US-70 after swapping kids and their kit (but not Mistletoe as she wasn’t with me that day!) after their athletics training.

This one was kind of iffy as it was getting close to the dinner rush hour.

But what’s life without taking the occasional risk, eh?

• 1639 – Order placed via the mobile app whilst in the Sam’s Club parking lot off South Saunders St. App estimates 14 minutes from there to the Chick Fil-A.
• 1645 – As I’m sitting in the usual tailback on Hammond Road, I’m thinking the estimate provided by the app seems to be shockingly accurate and taking into account the traffic that currently sucks rocks!
• 1650 – Arrive at US-70/Timber Dr intersection and I can see the queue from here. And it’s not looking promising…
• 1652 – Arrive at the conga line and I’m the second car in the street waiting to make the right turn into the queue.
• 1654 – In the conga line in the outboard lane of the two in operation, 20m to the order boards/choke point. It appears that the order takers are changing shift but this doesn’t materially affect what comes afterward as I don’t move at all whilst all that’s going on.
• 1655 – Order taker arrives and is another one that leads with that greeting I just *SO* love. Fair marks to him, his second attempt was decidedly more respectful but I would rather that be the default rather than the one more appropriate to teenager peers. Interestingly enough, the app seems to have pulled a switcheroo from the payment method I’d input to use the small balance I still had on a gift card and I had to deal with that but Apple Pay makes that pretty painless. Now that the gift card is empty, perhaps that’ll stop the app from defaulting to it which was annoying.
• 1657 – Moved slightly, 10m to choke point.
• 1700 – Meal delivered to car in the inboard lane behind the building. I can’t say I’m a real fan of this because that car really has nowhere to go and they already have their order which doesn’t speed things up and exposes the kids delivering the meal to a bit of unnecessary risk. At this point, I’m 5m from the choke point.
• 1701 – Arrived at choke point just in time to see alert that meal is ready.
• 1703 – I’m #3 in queue to the window but the meal is delivered in the line but at least the kids have a place to walk here and I manage to escape ahead of the two cars that were in front of me. The queue looks like it’s about one car length inside the property line as I’m leaving.
• 1704 – At the US-70 exit stoplight.

Eleven minutes through the queue that close to dinner rush isn’t bad (it’s actually the best drive-through time I’ve ever had since the pandemic if you discount the one run through Brier Creek’s bypass queue).

Compared to the industry average of 6.36 minutes and it doesn’t sound so hot but considering that the food at most of their competitors sucks rocks, I can live with this time in the queue especially as I have a new hobby of doing the play-by-play to pass the time. 🙂

I’m also introducing a new rating scheme in addition to the queue time and breakdown covering the areas I truly care about when visiting:

• Initial greeting is polite and respectful of our difference in age. If I was into unwarranted familiarity and rudeness, I’d go to their competition! Half a point can be recovered if the second attempt that’s offered is vastly improved over the first.
• Order correctness
• How bogus are the waffle fries? They need to be hot and retain their shape!
• Did the sandwich rule (nice large breast with crispy breading completely covering the bird) or did it drool (small chicken, breading too light)?

All in all, I’d say the interaction was pretty much spot on in the areas I care about with the one deduction coming at the beginning with the order taker but I give him credit for nailing the second attempted greeting. The order was totally correct and the waffle fries were nice and hot but the sandwich had a noticeably smaller chicken breast that was not to the usual standard of this location which tends to be the best in the area.

I’d give this one a solid three points out of four.