Chick-fil-A Says No to Drive-Thru AI: 7 Customer Service Lessons for Small Businesses

Chick-fil-A will not use AI to take drive-thru orders, CEO Andrew Cathy told CNBC in an interview published Oct. 4, even as McDonald's tests its Archy voice AI. His stance landed in the same weeks that 44% of 2,009 US consumers told Alchemer that AI has made it harder to reach a person when they need one.

The story didn't fade after the weekend. Restaurant Business columnist Jonathan Maze backed the decision on Oct. 7, and on Oct. 8 posts about customer service bots that won't hand people over to a human were trending on X. Small businesses face the same call at a smaller scale: which customer conversations should a machine handle, and which should stay with a person? Here's what was said, what the surveys show, what California's new law asks of big companies, and seven steps for small businesses.

What Chick-fil-A said

Cathy told CNBC the chain takes a "human plus" approach to technology. It's exploring AI behind the scenes, but its restaurants won't pursue AI voice ordering in drive-thru lanes.

"From our experience, we really want that hospitality to be human to human," he said. "We're not gonna substitute that interaction with technology, because we feel like that hospitality is so important to create that warm environment for consumers."

Chick-fil-A isn't small. CNBC reported that franchise disclosures put its 2025 revenue at $10.3 billion and that its roughly 3,000 locations generated $23.92 billion in system sales. Fox Business noted the chain still uses technology to increase efficiency. The decision is about the conversation with the customer, not about avoiding software.

Where the rest of the industry is going

Rivals are moving the other way. McDonald's said Archy has been more than 90% accurate in early tests and is part of a restaurant AI system it plans to roll out in stages from 2027, The Next Web reported. The same report said Taco Bell already uses voice AI ordering at more than 890 US restaurants.

Maze's Oct. 7 column for Restaurant Business called Chick-fil-A's choice "the right move," arguing that the chain's reputation rests on staff hospitality. That's an opinion, and many operators see voice AI as a fix for staffing and speed. What matters for a small business is choosing on purpose rather than by default.

What the surveys say

Two recent US surveys point in the same direction, with a caveat: both come from companies that sell customer experience software.

• Verint surveyed 5,000 US consumers between Jan. 5 and Feb. 13, 2026. 61% said they prefer speaking to a human agent, but 69% said they would switch to automated service if it fully resolved their issue. Among younger customers, that figure was 93%.
• In the same Verint survey, 79% said they would switch to a competitor after one bad experience, and 51% said businesses don't deliver when they need help.
• Alchemer's report, released Sept. 29, surveyed 2,009 US consumers. Besides the 44% who said AI has made reaching a person harder, 43% said they would pay more for a product or service that guarantees access to human support.
• In Alchemer's results, 37% said they'd received AI responses that misunderstood their question, and 26% said they'd received incorrect information.

Read together, the message isn't "customers hate AI." It's that customers hate getting stuck. Automation that solves the problem is welcome; automation that blocks the way to a person costs customers.

California's new rule for large companies

California enacted AB 1609 on Sept. 28, and it takes effect Jan. 1, 2027. According to a summary by law firm Mahro Law, it applies only to businesses with more than $500 million in national gross annual revenue that serve California customers. Most small businesses aren't covered.

Still, the rules are a useful benchmark for anyone. Covered businesses:

• can't present a chatbot as human, and must clearly disclose that it's a bot when a reasonable person could be misled
• must offer a simple way on every customer service platform to ask for a human agent, at least during regular business hours
• must make a good-faith effort to connect the customer to a person within 15 minutes, or give a specific appointment time within one business day
• must try to keep any single hold under 15 minutes and total waiting under an hour

Enforcement is by public prosecutors, with civil penalties of up to $5,000 for a first violation and $10,000 for each later one. Customers can't sue under the law.

7 steps for small businesses

1. List why customers contact you. Sort a month of emails, calls and messages. Hours, order status, booking changes and directions are good candidates for automation. Complaints, refunds and damaged orders should reach a person.
2. Make the human route easy to find. Put a phone number or contact option on every key page, and make sure any chatbot recognizes plain requests like "agent" or "talk to a person."
3. Set a response promise you can keep. You don't have to meet California's 15-minute standard, but pick a target, such as a reply within two business hours or a callback time within one business day, and post it.
4. Say when it's a bot. If an automated system answers chats or calls, tell customers at the start. It costs nothing and protects trust.
5. Hand off with context. When a conversation moves from a bot to a person, the person should see what was already said, so the customer doesn't have to repeat everything.
6. Catch unhappy customers early. Treat low ratings, repeat contacts and words like "refund" or "cancel" as signals to bring in a person quickly.
7. Measure it. Track first response time, how many issues get resolved on the first contact and how often people ask for a human. If that last number climbs, your automation is in the way. We covered how owners are automating instead of hiring in our lean teams breakdown, and how AI agents are starting to contact businesses for customers in our Personal Agent Protocol explainer.

Disclosure: some links are affiliate links; ShopperCove may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

If customer issues currently live in a shared inbox and someone's memory, a help desk with deadlines makes your response promise visible. LocalTry's offer page lists a customer service desk with ticket numbers, queues, owners, first-response and resolution deadlines, and automatic SLA warnings and escalation, plus a unified inbox for email, SMS, calls, website forms and social conversations. It also lists AI-assisted service resolution that drafts a reply, case summary and next-action checklist from the ticket history and approved knowledge, which a staff member can review before anything goes out. ShopperCove did not test LocalTry for this article. LocalTry link: Open linkShow address (affiliate link)

If your customers are other businesses and "talk to a person" usually means a scheduled call, the job is booking callbacks and keeping them. Clozure's offer page describes an AI business OS with an AI email assistant, a calendar with two-way Outlook and Google sync, CRM and pipeline tools, and meeting, RSVP and reminder automation. It's built for sales teams, not as a help desk, so use it to schedule and track follow-up calls. ShopperCove did not test Clozure for this article. Clozure link: Open linkShow address (affiliate link)

Tools that help

• LocalTry, CRM and operations workspace for service businesses and agencies. Per its offer page, Operator is $99 and Scale is $199 every 30 days, with 5 or 10 users, and the initial purchase has a 14-day money-back guarantee. LocalTry link: Open linkShow address
• Clozure, AI business workspace for sales teams. Its offer page lists $99 a month, with the first charge covering a 14-day trial and monthly billing after that until you cancel. ClickBank's standard refund policies apply. Clozure link: Open linkShow address

How this was made: facts were gathered on 8 Oct 2026 (IST) from CNBC's interview with Andrew Cathy, Fox Business, The Next Web's McDonald's report, Verint's and Alchemer's survey releases and Mahro Law's AB 1609 summary listed below, plus Restaurant Business's Oct. 7 column, which returned a server error on recheck. Written up with AI help and checked line by line against those sources. ShopperCove did not test any chatbot or voice AI for this article.

Sources

• Open cnbc.comShow address
• Open foxbusiness.comShow address
• Open thenextweb.comShow address
• Open verint.comShow address
• Open alchemer.comShow address
• Open mahrolaw.comShow address
• Open localtry.comShow address
• Open clozure.netShow address

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