Chick-fil-A just opened a wild new store design that it says handles three times as many drive-thru cars as other stores

• Chick-fil-A just opened a new multi-story restaurant in Georgia.
• The location is drive-thru only and has lanes just for customers who order through the chain's app.

Chick-fil-A's newest restaurant is a level above the rest — literally.

The chain opened a multi-story location on Thursday south of Atlanta in McDonough, Georgia — about a 30-mile drive from Chick-fil-A's headquarters. The restaurant is drive-thru only, with four lanes for cars on the ground level.

Restaurants that only offer drive-thru service aren't new to Chick-fil-A. The chain opened its first such location in 1993, it said in an announcement for the McDonough store.

But what makes Chick-fil-A's newest location novel is that the kitchen is located above the drive-thru lanes.

Despite the drive-thru and food prep areas being on different levels, Chick-fil-A said in its announcement that the model is designed "to expedite service."

"The kitchen is two times larger than a typical Chick-fil-A restaurant kitchen and the food conveyor system allows for a meal to be delivered to a Team Member every six seconds," the fast-food chain wrote in its announcement of the new restaurant.

The new restaurant will have dedicated lanes for customers who have placed their orders through Chick-fil-A's app in addition to traditional drive-thru lanes, where customers can order on the spot, the company said.

Chick-fil-A said it expects the system to handle "two to three times more vehicles than a standard Chick-fil-A restaurant drive-thru."

Improving such ordering is one area where Chick-fil-A has room to improve. Last year, one report found that Chick-fil-A had the slowest drive-thrus among the major US fast-food restaurants.

But the fried chicken sandwich chain isn't the first to experiment with this kind of restaurant.

Taco Bell opened its own two-story drive-thru restaurant in Minnesota in 2022. The design, called "Taco Bell Defy," also features lanes dedicated to filling orders placed online and a kitchen located above the drive-thru area.

The design limits the amount of land that the restaurant takes up, Taco Bell said when it announced the location in 2021.

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