Chick-fil-A worker shares video restaurant’s ‘secret’ conveyor-belt system: ‘Bet you didn’t know’
(NEXSTAR) — A Chick-fil-A location in Georgia is getting plenty of attention on TikTok after an employee shared footage of the restaurant’s “secret” conveyor-belt delivery system.
The video, which was originally shared to social media on May 29, shows what appears to be an elaborate conveyor system running along the ceiling and walls of the restaurant. Bags of food, attached to the conveyor belt with clips, travel along the track until they are ultimately dropped in a metal tray near the drive-thru window.
In an on-screen message, the employee explains that the apparatus is used to carry food from the restaurant’s kitchen to the drive-thru operator, “to make things move faster.”
He further described the system as “a Chick-fil-A secret I bet you didn’t know.”
The video has been viewed nearly 20 million times over the last few weeks.
A representative for Chick-fil-A has since confirmed that approximately 30 restaurants, or about 1% of its locations, have a similar system in place. The conveyor seen in the video has been in use for several years, according to Chick-fil-A.
Most conveyors, however, are not quite as elaborate as the one seen in the viral TikTok video. Many are horizontal conveyance systems used at locations with more than one drive-thru lane, to bring food to the secondary drive-thru kiosk. Others are used at restaurants with multiple stories.
The Houston Chronicle first took note of a similar system in 2006, upon the opening of a “double drive-thru” restaurant in Houston. At the time, the Chronicle claimed it was the first system of its kind, nothing that other two-lane drive-thru locations had used “dumbwaiters or mechanical delivery systems” to send food directly to the customers’ cars.