Chick-fil-A: America's Favorite Fast-Food Chain (2024)

For the seventh year in a row, Chick-fil-A continues to be America’s favorite fast-food chain. The fast-food chain topped the industry with an ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index) score of 83/100. Chick-fil-A also outscored the top full-service restaurant, LongHorn Steakhouse, thereby raising the bar pretty high.

In the graph above, you can see how Chick-fil-A beats giants like McDonald’s and Starbucks, to name a few. The ACSI score takes several indicators like order accuracy, food quality, speed of service and mobile app reliability, etc., to evaluate the performance of these restaurant chains.

So, what sets Chick-fil-A apart from others? Let’s find out.

Story of Chick-fil-A’s Consecutive Success

Locations

Headquartered in Georgia, Chick-fil-A only has 2,774 store locations across the United States. This number is much smaller compared to the number of store locations of restaurant giants like Subway, McDonald’s, etc. To put in perspective, Chick-fil-A contributes to just 2.4% of the 118,177 limited-service restaurants we analyzed in total.

Texas is home to the highest number of Chick-fil-A locations. California, despite being the largest state, comes fifth. On the other hand, Atlanta, Hawaii & Vermont do not have any Chick-fil-A stores.

Revenue

Despite having a lower number of stores, Chick-fil-A competes with the largest restaurant chains in the USA, ranking third after McDonald’s and Starbucks in terms of sales.

Chick-fil-A’s sales have been on the rise since 2009 and grew by over four times in the pandemic. Interestingly, the company jumped from annual revenue of $3.2 billion in 2009 to $13.7 billion in 2020.

Chick-fil-A’s success could be attributed to multiple factors:

Redefined Restaurant Experience

Although the pandemic has abruptly forced the global shutdown of restaurant chains across the US, Chick-fil-A was quick to respond. The company efficiently transitioned to drive-thru services during the pandemic. The benefit was two-fold. Not only did it boost their sales, but it also ensured consumer safety.

The chart above compares multiple popular restaurant chains in terms of the drive-thru experience offered to consumers. Chick-fil-A tops all the fields except menu item availability, possibly owing to the brand’s single-minded focus on chicken-based items. That said, it lags in the average speed of service. Their stores take about 541 seconds to deliver orders at drive-thrus.

Efficient In-Home Food Delivery Service

In one of its major moves, Chick-fil-A strengthened its partnerships with delivery partners like UberEats, DoorDash, and Grubhub amidst the pandemic. For example, look at the distribution of consumer ratings for Chick-fil-A’s home delivery service below.

It is remarkable how nearly 100% of Chick-fil-A locations are rated 4/5 on DoorDash. Similarly, on UberEats, most ratings are over 4.6/5. The company’s focus on customer satisfaction has taken its brand reputation up a notch in the pandemic.

Strategic Pricing

From breakfast meals to beverages, Chick-fil-A offers diverse menu choices. While many of its competitors expanded their product lines and sacrificed quality for speed, Chick-fil-A remained true to its core ideas. Instead, it prioritized offering healthy, convenient meal options that drastically increased the brand’s reputation amongst fast-food chains.

What’s more? Nearly 66.7% of all the items on Chick-fil-A’s menu are priced below $5 and 41% less than $3. Take a look at the company’s pricing strategy below:

Social Media Presence

Chick-fil-A has built a strong brand presence on social media with over 10.7 M followers across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It effectively utilizes networking platforms to stay connected with its consumer base.

Chick-fil-A ensures that its consumers have a great offline and online experience. The company’s customer-centric approach and clever advertising have played a key role in driving engagement.

In A Nutshell

Chick-fil-A’s attention to ensuring overall customer satisfaction has pushed the company on the road to success. Although the pandemic has altered how the restaurant industry works, the dine-in experience still reigns. As the post-pandemic world recuperates, retail store location data analysis can prove helpful in getting started with location strategy.

You can easily download ready-to-use retail store location datasets from the ScrapeHero Data Store. Our data store provides weekly updated data on millions of POIs across multiple countries and thousands of brands. If you need any custom datasets, fill out the form below, and our team will contact you at the earliest.