Not A Meme: Chick-fil-A Manager Improves Vaccine Drive-Thru Efficiency

From the very beginning of the rollout of the coronavirus, a very specific meme has persisted, stating that the entire operation would benefit from the guidance of whoever is in charge of making the Chick-fil-A drive-thru work.

To be fair, there are plenty of situations that have been similarly remarked upon.  Chick-fil-A has some intangible something that makes just about every throughput technician envious, and it was just a matter of time before someone suggested that they get involved in Operation Warp Speed.

In the case of this persistent meme, life is imitating art.

CNN reports that when a drive-thru COVID-19 vaccine clinic in South Carolina got backed up, the mayor called in an expert – the manager of the local Chick-fil-A restaurant.

According to CNN, the clinic opened on Jan. 22 but quickly became overwhelmed causing the computer system handling registrations to go down.

The mayor, Will Haynie told CNN, he immediately thought of Jerry Walkowiak, the manager of a nearby Chick-fil-A.

“When I heard about it, I called Jerry and asked if he would come help us out,” Mount Pleasant Mayor Will Haynie told CNN. “After he looked it over, he said, ‘There’s your problem right there. It’s backed up because you have one person checking people in.’ Then he showed us how to do it right.”

The experiment was wildly successful:  The wait time for a COVID vaccine in this particular instance has been reduced from an hour to just 15 minutes.