This is Gen Z’s favorite restaurant, survey says

By Ramishah Maruf, CNN

It’s been a good year for Chick-fil-A — a recent survey ranked it as Gen Z’s top restaurant, with 15% of respondents listing it as their favorite choice.

The annual Piper Sandler study surveyed 14,500 teens in 47 states, whose average age was just under 16 years old (15.8 years old, to be exact.)

Starbucks came in second at 12% of teens, followed by Chipotle (7%), McDonald’s (6%) and Olive Garden (3%).

Earlier this month, the restaurant showed up in another poll, with results that weren’t quite so favorable: QSR’s annual Drive-Thru Report found that Chick-fil-A had the slowest line among 10 restaurants, with an average wait time of about 107 seconds. But that was primarily because it’s so popular that it has a lot of cars lined up for its meals.

Then again, Chick-fil-A also led the industry in customer satisfaction in the same poll — 88% of customers said the fried chicken sandwich chain had “friendly service.”

The researchers also found that Chick-fil-A had fine-tuned its “check-point system,” which keeps customers engaged through different interactions with employees, starting from placing their to order to their famous reply to people who thank them: “my pleasure.”

The chain had 2,730 outlets and hit nearly $16 billion in sales in 2021, according to Technomic, a food industry research and consulting firm. (Chick-Fil-A is a privately owned firm that doesn’t release its results.)

The company hasn’t won everybody over, though. The chain’s support for anti-LGBTQ organizations and its opposition to same-sex marriage has been at the center of political debates and calls for boycotts.

— CNN’s Nathaniel Meyersohn contributed to this report.

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