McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A track customer locations so orders are filled when they’re near the store

McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A are introducing app features that track the locations of customers who order online so that staff can start preparing their meals when they are near the restaurant.

In accordance with Business Insider, Chick-fil-A said in early May that under the new feature, if a customer places a curbside or takeout order on its app and enables its location services, the restaurant in question will receive an alert when the customer is nearby so that the staff can start preparing their order.

By carefully scheduling when orders are placed, restaurants can reduce the time their customers wait to pick up their order, while ensuring their burgers and fries are still crispy and piping hot.

The technology is known as geofencing – it uses GPS to create a virtual fence around a location. Similarly, McDonald’s introduced a geofencing feature to its app in March.

An advantage for McDonald’s

McDonald’s CFO Ian Borden spoke about it in an April earnings call: “Using existing location data, it allows our team to start assembling a customer’s order before they arrive at the restaurant, and ultimately deliver hot, fresh food when customers arrive to pick up their order.”.

“While it is still too early to implement this new digital enhancement, initial results are already pointing to better service times and high customer satisfaction scores.Borden told investors.

McDonald’s geofencing technology alerts a restaurant when a mobile ordering customer is three minutes away.

Although it’s unclear exactly what proportion of McDonald’s orders are placed on its app, Borden said digital sales make up about 40% of all sales in the first quarter of 2023.

For its part, Chick-fil-A is rolling out its geo-fencing technology to restaurants in early summer. He said he had already tested the feature in 100 restaurants in the US and found that customer wait times were reduced, on average, by between one and two minutes.

The chicken sandwich chain said it was also adding a feature that gives customers an estimate of when their order would be ready, based on factors including order complexity and size: “Although it is an estimate, it is quite accurate”.