Effective marketing is one thing, exceptional marketing is an entirely different beast all together.  Where is this coming from?  Chick-Fil-A.

When I want to grab something fast for lunch, I usually think of only a few places, Chick-Fil-A always being on that list.  There are two of them within reach of my office and depending on what else I need to do during lunch I will find my way to one or the other, maybe once a week, sometimes more.

The other day I ended up at a Chick-Fil-A, one which I do not normally go to because it is usually too busy.  This day would be no exception.  There were no available parking spaces and the drive-thru line was wrapped around the building and spilling out into the road.  Not wanting to wait I drove across the street to Wendy’s where I was the only person in the drive-thru.  I was just amazed.  About a week later I went back to this same Chick-Fil-A and as I pulled around to the drive-thru, there were two people standing outside taking orders.  One person walked up to my car and wrote my order down and then gave me a sheet of paper.  As I pulled forward I handed the paper to the next person who called in the order on her cell phone.  I got to the window, got my food, and left. 

About a week later I went back during lunch and found the same thing was happening.  This time I had to ask what was going on with their intercom system and they said that there was nothing wrong with it.  They said that by putting people outside to get orders, they could call them in to the kitchen faster and get the food prepared quicker.  They also said they make more money with the new process and will continue to do it.  Not all Chick-Fil-A locations have caught on to this.  I never felt like their service suffered during lunch anyway, however, it is hard to argue with moving through even faster.

What amazes me more than the discovery of how to increase lunch profits and performance is the Chick-Fil-A marketing engine running that would cause their parking lot and drive-thru to bleed into the highway when Wendy’s, once the most popular, had only a handful of customers at a site no more than 50 feet away.  That is impressive marketing and promotion to me.