Chick-fil-A continues to be a leader in the fast food industry, and in the latest example, the iconic franchise is choosing to zig away from AI automation while other establishments zag right towards it.
You can’t really go through life in 2026 without artificial intelligence popping up. Either you are using it, you are actively against it, or it’s coming up at the water cooler (do people still talk at the water cooler?) or at the dinner table. Every company seems to be utilizing the technology in some sort of way in the name of efficiency and… whatever other excuse they come up with to cut costs and, unfortunately, cut jobs.
Except for Chick-fil-A. They are doing things the old fashioned way… human to human.
The fast food restaurant specializing in chicken (and closed on Sundays) is famous for its fast and polite service. Their drive thru operation is run so smoothly that okes are often made about how whoever is in charge of Chick-fil-a’s drive thru plan should be running our country.
There’s also the component of Chick-fil-A employees always saying “My pleasure.” That’s part of the job, and the fast food chain won’t be trading out those in-person my pleasures for AI ones anytime soon. While a number of other fast food places like Wendy’s and McDonald’s are rolling out automated order tech powered by AI at their drive thrus, Chick-fil-A has announced that they’ll continue to prioritize… well, humans.
Chick-fil-A CEO Andrew Cathy recently spoke with CNBC and said that the company thinks human hospitality sets them apart, and will continue to do so while some of their rivals cut the personal part out of the drive thru lane:
“From our experience, we really want that hospitality to be human to human. We’re not going to substitute that interaction with technology, because we feel like that hospitality is so important to create that warm environment for consumers.”
Cluck yeah (we’ll see if my editor leaves that horrible chicken pun in the story).
What a sigh of relief though, right? The consumer is often left to metaphorically machete their way through a jungle of automation just to talk to a real person. That was bad before AI came around, and is likely to only get worse as artificial intelligence progresses.
The only way it’ll be avoided is if businesses prioritize people, like how Chick-fil-A is with their drive thru team. Not only are they making sure that humans still have jobs and are taken care of… they are making a commitment to customers who, by my calculations, will soon be fed up with all of the AI voice technology.
What a lot of competitors don’t realize is a consumer may very well choose Chick-fil-A over another place just because the human beings still running the show are likely to be more personable. It’s a move that will continue to set the fast food chicken restaurant apart from the rest, and most importantly, an AI “my pleasure” just wouldn’t hit the same.
