Differences in Navigation Experience

When navigating through the restaurant, I was forced to wait at a few different instances. For example, I had to wait for the person ahead of me to enter, I had to wait in line to place my order, and then I had to wait to receive my order. On the website, I didn’t have to worry about being in other people’s way or not ordering quickly enough. I had all of the time in the world to place my order.

In-Store Navigation Difficulties

In the restaurant there were a few things that made it inconvenient to navigate. For example, as I was walking up to the main entrance I had to pass between the cars in line for the drive-thru, which is awkward and potentially dangerous. Once inside, there was a really long line…actually there were four lines but only two registers. It was confusing. After I ordered, I wasn’t sure where I should go. Because it was so crowded I wanted to move to allow for more space, but if I moved too far I wouldn’t hear them say my order was ready.

Online Navigation DifficultiesOn the Chick-fil-A website there is a section under food labeled “Order Food” and another section labeled “Catering.” Because I wanted to order a chicken sandwich, I chose the first option. The first problem I ran into was that the time I chose to pick up my order wasn’t correct and I couldn’t progress. I had to figure out on my own that my restaurant didn’t open until after 6 am. The second problem I ran into was at the checkout. As I completed my order a message told me that I had to spend $100.00 or more. I think that it is very misleading because to me, “catering” is any food order for a large group of people and an order over $100.00 should qualify.

Online or In-Store?Any user looking to purchase one chicken sandwich would have to do so in the restaurant. If they were looking to purchase for an entire building full of people, however, the website would be a convenient way to place a large order and have it ready for pickup by lunch at a future date and time.

I do believe that Chick-fil-A has an opportunity to provide customers with an online ordering capability for quick lunch pickups since the infrastructure already exists; however, the restaurants may not be able as yet to time manage such a system successfully.