They must be getting the chicken minis, which are their chicken tenders on Sister Schuberts rolls and those are sweet. The chicken biscuits aren't sweet.


And yes the reason people are camping out is the free food. I have a few friends that have done it multiple times. I wouldn't ever do it, but whatever floats their boat.

I can't eat their fried chicken anymore (gives me heartburn), but they recently changed their grilled chicken and it's a much better product than it used to be. So I'll occasionally get that or a salad if I'm with someone else that wants to go there.

Yes - I've seen that done for larger catered events and it looks awesome. For us, it's more a case where someone wants to call a meeting, and the only timeslot available is noon, so we just take orders for 6-8 burritos and order online.

Not sure if this is done at all CFA's, but, come 10:30am, employees will give away all breakfast items to those sitting in the dining room at the time.

I did not grow up in the south. I adopted it as my home.

My taste in biscuits is pretty mainstream. My taste in cornbread (sweet) is considered heresy.

I've lived in a half dozen CFA markets and visited dozens more and never heard of this. However at 10:30 in the morning, I'm almost never at a CFA. I may try this tomorrow. If you're right, I know where I will be at 10:30 6 mornings a week after I retire. ^

To Americans, "free food" is such a multi-tiered combo of hope, joy, satisfaction and bliss that it's no wonder you can get thousands to camp out for it.

The only more powerful two-word phrase in the US? "Free liquor."

Considering that the food is all made-to-order [fries included] and takes a minimum of ~10-minutes, I doubt you will ever see a Five Guys drive-thru.

I can't imagine being the third guy in line and having to wait ~20-30 minutes for a burger.

What do you define as an "average meal"? Sandwich, fries, 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew and 2 quarts of ice cream?

Whopper - 650 cal, 37g fat, 11g saturated fat, 1.5g transfat, 60mg cholesterol, 50g carbs

CFA classic - 440 cal, 18g fat, 4g saturated fat, 0g transfat, 55mg cholesterol, 41g carbs

CFA grilled - 320 cal, 5g fat, 1.5g saturated fat, 0g transfat, 65mg cholesterol, 40g carbs

Fries - 400 cal, 21g fat, 3g saturated fat, 0g transfat, 0mg cholesterol, 48g carbs

Check my math, but 39 (or 26) isn't greater than 111.

I believe I checked every single sandwich, wrap, and salad and couldn't find a single item even close to the fat of just one Whopper.

I wanted to challenge that assertion myself but was too lazy to do the research. Thank you.

Indeed, and when supplied at one's place of employment, free food seems to take on inscrutable and magical powers, even more so if the wages provided are sufficient to keep employees quite well-fed, and Engel's law applies firm-wide.

Same here :p

No!

Yet people do it for CFA, and have done it in the past for Krispy Kreme (mediocre donuts), In-N-Out (mediocre fast food burgers), and probably a bunch of other crappy fast food places I've forgotten about. And I don't think free food was involved in those (or at least it wasn't advertised that you could get free food by being the first 50 or whatever).

Something about the recipe for the chicken patties being fried up really works well. McDonald's has tried to duplicate it with their "Southern style chicken sandwich" in some markets (which at least is a step up from the awful McChicken), but hasn't gotten the formula quite right. Would not be surprised if the proprietary part wasn't very bad for you.

Waffle fries also are semi-unique...others could try to duplicate, but it seems that if you make a splash initially with one type of fry you have to stay with it. So McDonald's is known for the straight and narrows, Arby's for the curly fries, and Chick Fil- for the waffle fries.

They had a good banana-pudding flavored shake about a year or so ago.

The notable thing about Chick Fil-As around here that never ceases to amaze me is how long the drive-thru lines will get, i.e. how long people are willing to wait (and use gas) in that line rather than get out of their cars, SUVs or whatever. Inevitably they will be behind someone with a large order or with something they don't have already prepared and get a delay, so from a time perspective the drive-thru is a terrible choice. Chick Fil-A isn't the only place I've seen people make horrible time trade-offs by being in the drive-thru, but I think it's the worst (i.e. longest lines of cars).

You don't get it because you must have CFA confused with some other fast food chain that serves chicken. ;)
The standard chicken sandwich is a bun, piece of chicken, and two pickle slices.
No lettuce in sight.
If you order the CFA deluxe sandwich, you'll get added a tomato slice and a very large piece of lettuce that is way bigger than the bun.

But then they'd have to park, and get out of their car, and *gasp* actually walk!


I can totally understand the preference to wait if you have kids in the car, though.

I don't see their waffle fries as being anything noteworthy. Carl's Jr. makes good waffle fries, too.

Had Arby's curly fries on Monday night. mmmmmmmmm