The upcoming change that was announced on November 16th may come off as strange, since the intention is to get people out of the drive-thru, not in it.
The 30 second Christmas-themed ad features a man standing in a long line, presumably waiting to check out with his gifts for the holiday season. As he waits in the long line, he checks his KFC app on his phone… and uses the new “Quick Pick-Up” feature. Once he arrives at his KFC, he’s able to skip the line and go right ahead to pick up his meal.
The description for this video really wants to emphasize that this new pick up method is “finger-licking quick”.
The only thing better than getting finger lickin’ chicken is getting finger lickin’ chicken finger lickin’ quick. That’s right, folks. With KFC Quick Pick-Up, you can order ahead and skip our line when you get to KFC. Order ahead at KFC.com or with the KFC app.
KFC YouTube Channel
Take a shot every time they write “finger lickin'” or “KFC” and you’ll be wasted faster than you can say “finger lickin’ chicken”.
But I digress. The Quick Pick-Up feature isn’t too surprising of an announcement itself, since more and more establishments are offering these skip-the-line options. What’s strange is the reason why KFC is implementing the Quick Pick-Up: to get people out of their drive-thrus.
A 2021 KFC customer survey revealed that the average speed of their drive-thru times had decreased to 6 minutes and 30 seconds – which can be a long time to sit in a drive-thru, especially when more efficient fast food drive-thrus are available nearby. If you’re in a rush to get back from your lunch break or to get home from work, you might be more likely to go to the Popeyes across the street if you know your local KFC’s drive-thru takes forever to go through.
One of the reasons their drive-thru times may be slowing down is due to the growing popularity of services like DoorDash, UberEats, and BiteSquad during the height of the pandemic. If a Quick Pick-Up option isn’t available, third party delivery vendors may have to go through the drive-thru to save time as they pick up orders. Delivery drivers may pick up several orders in one go in order to be more efficient and make more deliveries, but in turn this may slow down the drive-thru line as drivers wait for their multiple orders to be handed to them.
Now delivery drivers and customers should hopefully be able to walk right in and grab their food from a shelf, cutting down the wait time. If you’re a fan of KFC, we hope that this turns out to actually be finger lickin’ quick.
Have $4 and live in Florida? Check out the bigger, better KFC chicken sandwich.
