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In this May 2022 file photo, a look at the site approved for renovations to become a new Chick-fil-A restaurant in Clifton Park.
By Marlene Kennedy/For The Leader-Herald
I don’t think I’d be going out on a limb in suggesting that traffic jams will accompany the opening of the first local restaurants of popular chicken-sandwich-seller Chick-fil-A.
The sites in Clifton Park and North Greenbush are still shells, but given that workers were busy at both on Sunday this week, they’ll fill in quickly. And given that each will debut in an already-bustling commercial corridor and will sport two drive-thru lanes, fingers crossed there’ll be plans at the ready to ease congestion when they do.
The Atlanta-based chain, with more than 2,300 franchised restaurants – plus mall-based locations and food-service-licensed sites at airports, colleges and highway rest stops – has a loyal following and always polls at the top of consumer surveys.
That makes it a profitable business, with total systemwide sales last year of $18.8 billion, $2 billion ahead of 2021, according to the company’s March franchise disclosure document, a filing required of companies looking for prospective franchisees.
But fandom can be double-edged: Drive-thru wait times put Chick-fil-A at the bottom of a 2022 Top 10 list of fast-food purveyors in the annual drive-thru report of trade publication QSR magazine.
Average service time at Chick-fil-A was 325 seconds (5.4 minutes), versus Taco Bell’s No. 1 time of just under 222 seconds (3.7 minutes), according to the report. But to call Chick-fil-A “slow” was to miss customers’ 93% rating for speed of service satisfaction, QSR said, behind only Arby’s at 96%.
Chick-fil-A also was more likely to have multiple cars in drive-thru lines versus the others, signaling how busy the chain is, but moved them along at a faster clip, QSR said.
Drive-thru overflow has led to pushback in some communities, though, when neighboring retail or street traffic is affected. The city council in Santa Barbara, Calif., even was ready to declare one Chick-fil-A a public nuisance last summer until the franchisee proposed a new drive-thru pattern, according to media reports.
The Clifton Park Chick-fil-A will sit off Route 146 near Northway Exit 9 on a two-lane road serving Clifton Park Center mall. The North Greenbush restaurant is on a multi-lane portion of Route 4, kitty-corner from the 180,000-square-foot Van Rensselaer Square shopping center at the intersection of Route 43, which accesses Interstate 90 at Exit 8.
A Chick-fil-A spokeswoman said both restaurants will have team members greeting customers in the dual-lane drive-thrus, taking orders on tablets and facilitating payment to speed visits.
She had no confirmed opening date for either restaurant, but said “later this summer” was likely.
Chick-fil-A still is interested in putting a restaurant in Latham on Troy-Schenectady Road, she said, describing the effort as “early in the process.”
In August 2021, the company submitted a narrative and drawings to the town of Colonie for a restaurant at the entrance to the Latham Farms retail plaza off Northway Exit 6, another highly visible — and highly trafficked – location.
Marlene Kennedy is a freelance columnist. Opinions expressed in her column are her own and not necessarily the newspaper’s. Reach her at [email protected].
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