Chick-fil-A will keep real people taking drive-thru orders instead of artificial intelligence, CEO Andrew Cathy says, even as McDonald's and Wendy's race to automate the window.
Cathy told CNBC the chicken chain has no plan to replace order-takers with AI voice systems. He framed the choice as a defense of the company's core product: human hospitality.
FOX Business reported the remarks as rivals move the other way. McDonald's and Wendy's are already testing or deploying AI to speed up and standardize drive-thru orders. Chick-fil-A is drawing a bright line at the point of customer contact.
The privately held chain created about $23.9 billion in U.S. systemwide sales in 2025, according to franchise disclosure figures. Cathy is betting that warm service still moves more chicken than a flawless machine script.
Cathy did not hedge. He said the company wants the exchange at the window to stay personal.
Cathy said:
"From our experience, we really want that hospitality to be human to human,"
He went further on why the chain will not swap that moment for software.
Cathy said:
"We’re not going to substitute that interaction with technology, because we feel like that hospitality is so important to create that warm environment for consumers."
That stance matches a longer company line. In 2023 Chick-fil-A unveiled digitally focused restaurant designs. Officials said then they wanted technology to "elevate the human touchpoints" while keeping people at the center of the guest experience.
Cathy still sees room to experiment. He said the company is exploring potential AI uses behind the scenes. He just will not let the tech take the order itself.
Cathy said:
"We think about all these new things into the future, about how will people want to receive food in the future?"
And he called the moment open-ended for operators who stay focused on the guest.
Cathy said:
"It’s a fun time in the industry, to think about all the possibilities of what we can do to make a better experience for our guests."
Chick-fil-A did not immediately respond to a FOX Business request for more comment beyond the CNBC interview.
While Cathy holds the line, two major competitors are rolling AI into the lane.
McDonald's said at an investor day last month it plans to test "Archy," its voice AI technology, to take orders in English and Spanish. Related reporting also described the chain testing an AI drive-thru order-taking system called ArchiQ at five locations across the country.
Wendy's has been deploying FreshAi drive-thru technology developed with Google Cloud. The company designed the system to improve ordering speed, accuracy, and consistency.
Those moves chase throughput and fewer mistakes. Cathy is chasing something harder to measure on a dashboard: whether the guest feels welcome.
The chain is not anti-technology. It is anti-replacing the person who greets you.
In 2024 Chick-fil-A opened an elevated drive-thru restaurant in McDonough, Georgia. The site runs four drive-thru lanes under an elevated kitchen. A conveyor system can deliver a meal to an employee every six seconds. Company officials said the design can handle two to three times as many vehicles as a traditional Chick-fil-A drive-thru.
Customers there can still order ahead digitally or place the order with an employee. The machines move food faster. A person still owns the conversation.
That pattern shows up in ordinary stores too. Photo captions from recent openings and shifts show employees taking orders in the lane, including the first customers through a new Keizer, Oregon location and a worker in Jackson Township, Ohio, in September 2024. The company keeps putting staff at the window even as it redesigns the back of house.
Speed matters. Chick-fil-A has proved it can engineer for volume. Cathy's point is that volume without hospitality is not the brand customers showed up for in the first place.
Fast-food operators face real pressure: labor costs, long lanes, order errors, and guests who want food now. AI order-taking promises cleaner data, shorter waits, and fewer missed modifiers. McDonald's and Wendy's are treating that promise as the next competitive edge.
Cathy is making a different bet. He is treating the brief human exchange as a feature, not a bug. In his telling, the warm environment is part of what people buy when they buy the chicken.
That choice lands in a culture that often treats every human task as a candidate for automation. A major chain saying "not this part" is rare enough to notice. Chick-fil-A is large enough, at nearly $24 billion in U.S. system sales, that the refusal is not a niche luxury. It is a scaled decision about what the company thinks customers still value.
Rivals can keep tuning the voice models. Cathy is keeping the person who says hello.
When the rest of the industry races to delete the human from the transaction, the chain that refuses is defending something simple: people still want to deal with people.