15A – Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 2

For my segment, I’ve chosen 3 individuals who eat at Chick-fil-a a somewhat regular basis.

In the first interview, it was done with my friend who goes to school in Jacksonville at UNF. We discussed my idea and he thought it was interesting and anticipated that it would improve customer satisfaction significantly if that 3-lane drive thru worked. Chick-fil-a is one of his favorite places to eat for lunch. However, he asked me how much would be to install the third drive thru lane? How much would it be to install the new system at all the Chick-Fil-a’s across the United States? I didn’t know the answer to these questions, so this interview definitely helped open my eyes regarding my idea in that I don’t have all the answers yet.

My next interview was done with my friend who goes to FSU. His main reason for eating Chick-fil-a so much is that his dorm on campus is literally 50 steps from the main Chick-fil-a on campus. It’s super convenient for him as all he needs to do is simply walk outside of his dorm and it’s there. He supported my idea heavily as he thinks the 3-lane drive thru will be good in spacing out cars and speeding up order times. However, he also brought up the point in that there’s no evidence that the idea will work, so that many trials need to be dome before the idea is implemented statewide.

My last interview was done with my uncle who lives in Orlando. He lives like 3 minutes from a Chick fil-a so he often stops there to get dinner for his family whenever they don’t cook. He told me that the drive-thru lines are usually worse during the days so most times he’ll wait to eat it for dinner. Once I told him idea, he was immediately interested but he did have concerns. If all the Chick-fila-a restaurants around the US implemented the 3-lane drive thru, it would significantly affect the architecture for a lot of the restaurants. Most of the restaurants would need to be upgraded or knocked down entirely in order to create space. This in turn could cost a lot of money on Chick-fil-a’s end. My uncle is right to have these concerns, and I had never considered that factor in thinking of my idea.

Summary: Although all of them liked the idea, it still isn’t 100% that the 3-lane drive thru will ultimately be beneficial and efficient.  The cost of adding this third lane is still unsure and it overall may not be effective in the long run as many of the established restaurants may need to upgrade its facility which will only cost more and more money. To figure it out if it works, a few test runs should be done at some of the already existing locations that are larger than most of the other restaurants. Once these results are gathered, it will be clear whether the plan works or doesn’t work.