Chick-fil-A Ensures Near 100% Uptime With Cellular Back-up

Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A, Inc., the nation's second-largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain (based on sales), has over 1,500 restaurants in 37 states and Washington, D.C. Chick-fil-A serves freshly prepared food products in malls, free-standing units, drive thru-only outlets, college campuses, hospitals, airports, businesses and industrial sites.

 

Challenges

Fueled by a successful growth strategy in both new and existing markets, Chick-fil-A has continued to increase their free-standing restaurant openings each year. One critical preparation is the implementation of the point-of-sale (POS) infrastructure, of which data connectivity is a key component to enable the verification of customers available credit lines.

Unfortunately, Chick-fil-A continued to run into issues with hardline connectivity providers. Local telcos at new retail locations consistently missed landline installation dates, rendering the chain’s POS systems useless. In addition to threatening the viability of a location’s grand opening date - resulting in disappointed employees and customers and bad publicity - no monetary transaction capabilities means no revenue.

Solution

Chick-fil-A’s corporate Information Technology (IT) decided to adopt a wireless POS solution utilizing the Sierra Wireless AirLink Raven X intelligent gateway. Chick-fil-A’s corporate IT team realized that wireless, cellular connectivity offered its retail locations both cost reduction and flexibility, as hardwiring a location costs thousands of dollars, and landline service is subject to higher on-going monthly usage charges.

With robust wireless signals and the greater bandwidth and faster data transfer rates offered by 3G cellular technology, Chick-fil-A has found its wireless systems to provide the mission critical uptime required to maintain the customer service levels demanded by one of the largest, privately-held restaurant chains.

“Now, Chick-fil-A can begin processing credit cards as soon as we open a new location; we do not have to worry about delays caused by lags in getting the landline POS infrastructure in place.” explained Tony Letts, IT senior supervisor at Chick-fil-A

The Sierra Wireless’ AirLink Raven intelligent gateways have provided the following benefits:

• Decreased cost of installation by eliminating need for landline connection to Chick-fil-A POS systems.
• Eliminated wires, enabling a more portable solution.
• Shortened cycle from installation to revenue-generation, enabling immediate monetization of the retail site.

For more information, or for sales inquiries, please contact Sierra Wireless or one of our distributors.