Ordering Mistakes Everyone Makes At Chick-Fil-A

Every fast food chain has its loyal fans, but few stir up quite as much as passion as Chick-fil-A. While it's been doling out its chicken sandwich and waffle potato fries since the 1960s, Chick-fil-A's popularity skyrocketed in the noughties when it managed to quadruple its sales and establish itself as America's most popular fast food chicken restaurant, building an über-dedicated fanbase in the process.

And yet, not everyone knows how to get the most from the Chick-fil-A experience. There's no wrong way to order from the restaurant, per se, but there are a few pitfalls — and perks — that only the most ardent of customers would know in advance. Luckily for you, we're deeply passionate (perhaps concerningly passionate) about fast food and have spent years exploring the many hacks that can improve your experience. From "secret" menu items to securing free chicken, we've compiled the ultimate guide to making the most of your next visit to Chick-fil-A.

Cravings hit with no rhyme or reason, but if they strike on a Sunday, you can guarantee that Chick-fil-A won't be there to satisfy them. Without fail, the chain famously closes every Sunday. This is true of all of its locations. Every Chick-fil-A — even those that would theoretically attract heavy footfall on a Sunday, like those located at airports, stadiums, or malls — is off-limits for the last day of the week.

A lot of people assume that this is because of its founder's religious beliefs. While it's true that Truett Cathy was a devout Christian and did indeed observe the Sabbath as a day of rest, his decision to shutter Chick-fil-A locations on a Sunday was also inspired by his own experience in the food industry. Having previously worked seven days a week at restaurants that opened 24 hours a day, he wanted to give his employees the opportunity to properly rest (and worship, if they were also religious) when he opened the first Chick-fil-A in Georgia.

This tradition has stuck with the restaurant to this day despite the fact that the chain misses out on roughly $1.2 billion of annual revenue as a result. While there have been a handful of exceptions over the years, such as when workers in Texas volunteered to go in and prepare food for victims during a tornado outbreak in 2015, it's extremely unlikely that we'll see the chain become a seven-day business any time soon.

Okay, yes, a Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich ordered via Mobile Thru will taste just as good as one ordered via the regular drive-thru. The key difference here is that one is considerably quicker — and less stressful — than the other. If you have the Chick-fil-A app, Mobile Thru is the far superior method of ordering your food, and can make a huge difference the efficiency of your visit.

Available at select restaurants, the Mobile Thru works by letting you place your order in advance on the app and reduce the time you waste waiting in the car. When you arrive at the restaurant you chose as your pickup point, you just have to follow the signs for the dedicated Mobile Thru lane. There, you scan a QR code to let Chick-fil-A know that you're there and head to the window to collect your food from a team member. Simple.

Since it first started testing the feature in 2021 and formally introduced it in 2023, Chick-fil-A has rapidly expanded the availability of Mobile Thru, making this option viable to many more customers. According to Chick-fil-A, this can speed up your ordering experience by 40% compared to the drive-thru. That says a lot, considering that the chain apparently already has the fastest drive-thru time by car. While the experience will obviously vary from restaurant to restaurant, the good news is that customers have reported positive (and, most importantly, rapid) experiences with Mobile Thru in general.

We're not saying that the Chick-fil-A waffle potato fries are bad. In fact, we'd even say that they're up there with the best fast food fries. Crunchy on the outside but soft and fluffy on the inside, they're borderline potato perfection — we just think that there's much more to the "sides" section of the Chick-fil-A menu than fries, and you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't explore it further.

Case in point: the Chick-fil-A mac & cheese. We could wax poetic about this pot of gooey, creamy goodness all day long. Using a mix of Parmesan, cheddar, and Romano, it's the crispy top layer of cheese that edges this dish into the top tier of Chick-fil-A offerings. It's much better than any fast food pasta side dish has the right to be, and also makes a tasty addition to Chick-fil-A's Chicken Sandwich.

If you're looking for something a bit less decadent, we recommend the Kale Crunch Salad. We know it's rare to step into a Chick-fil-A with the intention of ordering the most nutritious thing on the menu, but with a blend of curly kale, green cabbage, apple cider and dijon mustard vinaigrette, and roasted almonds, we promise that this is miles above the usual sad-looking fast food salad. Like the mac and cheese, you can even slot it into your chicken sandwich to boost its nutritional profile (although we also understand if you'd rather just embrace the latter's carby, salad-free natural state).

If you're a Chick-fil-A regular, there's really no excuse not to download the chain's app and join Chick-fil-A One. While a lot of fast food reward schemes are more trouble than they're worth, we promise that there's value to Chick-fil-A One. Most importantly, it actually transforms your orders into points that can help you rack up free food.

The system is pretty simple. With every qualifying order, you'll get 10 points for every dollar you spend. From 200 points, you can start converting those points into rewards. For example, you can get an Icedream Cone for 200 points or a medium waffle potato fries for 400 points, while 1,200 points get you 12 chicken nuggets. The easiest way to get your points is to place your order through the app, but even if you forget, you can scan your receipts to claim them after your visit.

And that's just the Standard Tier. As you collect more points, you'll start climbing the membership tiers. Once you hit 1,000 points, you'll join the Silver Tier, where you get 11 points for every $1 spent and the ability to gift rewards to others. At 4,000 points, you'll become a Red Tier member and get 12 points for every $1, plus the opportunity for a free backstage tour of the Chick-fil-A Home Office. The Signature Tier is unlocked at 10,000 points, when you'll get 13 points for every $1 and unlock a whole new elite category of rewards.

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but if you drop by Chick-fil-A, it can also be the tastiest. While the chain has offered breakfast since 1986 and it's popular with Chick-fil-A regulars, it still doesn't quite get the laurels it deserves, dwarfed in the market by the likes of McDonald's, Wendy's, and Taco Bell.

If you're one of the customers not regularly taking advantage of its early menu, there's a whole other side to the Chick-fil-A waiting to be explored before it stops serving breakfast at 10.30 a.m. Some of the chain's early hour offerings are arguably even tastier than the dishes served up for the rest of the day. Standouts include the Hash Brown Scramble Burrito, an irresistible blend of hash browns, scrambled eggs, and Monterey Jack and cheddar cheeses, and the Spicy Chicken Biscuit, which combines the same chicken used in its sandwiches with a buttermilk biscuit.

Chicken biscuits are where it all began for Chick-fil-A's breakfast menu. Nowadays, it sells nearly 170 million biscuits per year, which should tell you everything you need to know about their quality. It's this quality that really sets Chick-fil-A apart from its competitors. These biscuits are handmade at most restaurants each day, giving its morning meal a more wholesome feel than you'd expect from a fast food breakfast.

Let's get one thing straight: Chick-fil-A does not have a secret menu. If you go up to the counter and directly request a Buffalo Chicken Sandwich, you'll most likely be told that no such thing exists. What you can do, however, is hack the system by ordering specific items or altering your order to create brand-new dishes that upgrade the chain's already stellar menu.

For example, if you did want to order a Buffalo Chicken Sandwich, all you have to do is order a Spicy Chicken Sandwich with a side of Zesty Buffalo Sauce. Either squeeze that out onto your chicken, or, for a more even, remove the chicken from your sandwich, add it into your sandwich bag with your sauce, and shake. The same hack can be used with any dipping sauce, meaning you could theoretically also create a makeshift Polynesian Chicken Sandwich or Honey Mustard Sandwich.

If it's an ice cream sandwich you're after, just ask for two Chocolate Chunk Cookies and an Icedream Cup, then scoop the latter in between your cookies, and voilà: a DIY Cookie Icedream Sandwich. An equally yummy treat can be crafted by combining an Icedream Cup and your go-to soda to make a float or ordering a Cookies and Cream Shake with extra chocolate syrup to have a Chocolate Cookies and Cream Shake. The possibilities are endless — they just take a little bit of creativity and manual labor on your end to make them a reality.

On the whole, Chick-fil-A tends to serve hot, fresh, satisfying food, no matter what time of day you order. Just like any fast-food restaurant, some menu items may be prepared in bulk during busy periods to help workers work their way through customers at a faster rate. While employees claim that hot food is never sat out for longer than 20 minutes at a time, that can still be long enough to mean that you occasionally receive food that's slightly less fresh or hot than what you'd receive at any other time of day.

If you want to ensure that you're receiving the freshest food possible, you can always be direct and request it as fresh or extra hot when you order. However, as Chick-fil-A employees have previously noted, that doesn't necessarily mean workers will listen. You also run the risk of coming across as rude (or, as one Reddit user so eloquently put it, "Don't be a Karen"). A more effective alternative is to ask for one element of your meal — such as the dill pickle chips in the Chicken Sandwich, or the bacon in the Grilled Chicken Club Sandwich — to either be removed, doubled, or served on the side. Each custom order is made from scratch, which means that you can guarantee a piping hot, fresh meal. Just bear in mind that you will most likely have to wait a bit longer for your food.

Celebrating your birthday at many chain restaurants means perks, including Chick-fil-A – especially if the chain knows it's your birthday. One of the many perks of signing up for the aforementioned Chick-fil-A One membership program is that it will reward you with a free gift just for being born.

The only rule here is that you need to enter your birthday on the app at least 24 hours before the big day itself. If you wait until the day comes, you'll unfortunately need to wait another year for your gift. The actual gift you receive depends on your Chick-fil-A One tier. Standard Chick-fil-A One members can choose between a free Chocolate Chunk Cookie or Chocolate Fudge Brownie. If you've hit Silver Tier, your horizons widen to include the options of a Chick-fil-A Milkshake, Frosted Lemonade, Frosted Coffee, or Icedream. At Red Tier, you level up from dessert to either a grilled or regular sandwich or nuggets. Meanwhile, if you're a Chick-fil-A One Signature member, you can receive a full entrée of your choice (plus, for what it's worth, our total respect for having managed to accrue 10,000 points).

If you don't feel like dropping by Chick-fil-A on your actual birthday, the good news is that your gift won't disappear. You have up to 30 days to claim your gift and, should your birthday fall on a Sunday, you'll also be able to claim your gift a day early to accommodate for Chick-fil-A's operating hours.

No, Chick-fil-A doesn't serve beef. Yes, it has a history of celebrating Cow Appreciation Day. From 2005 onwards, customers would flock to Chick-fil-A dressed up as our bovine pals to claim their free entrée. Sadly, this all changed with the onset of COVID-19. To encourage social distancing, Chick-fil-A's Cow Appreciation Day celebration was axed in 2020 and is yet to return to its stores years later.

But that doesn't mean the day goes by totally unnoticed. Instead of encouraging people to dress up en masse, the past few years have seen Chick-fil-A instead mark Cow Appreciation Day with Code Moo — an online game where customers can play for their chance to win free food. This typically runs from July through August, with prizes including nuggets, brownies, drinks, and even sandwiches, depending on the week.

When the promotion is running, the game can be accessed via the chain's app. As per Chick-fil-A, the game itself sees customers "hit the (virtual) racetracks in a four-course mission to help stop Circus Burger and spread the Cows' 'Eat Mor Chikin' message, choosing their favorite cow character and vehicle to play." Fun though it may be, customers have complained that the prizes (which are limited to the first two million winners per week) have decreased in quality compared to when the game first launched. Regardless, free food is free food, which is why you'll never catch us skipping our daily Cow Moo session come July.

The telltale sign that a fast food sauce has reached cult classic status is when it crosses over from restaurants to grocery store shelves. While that's the case for a significant chunk of Chick-fil-A's dipping sauce lineup, it's still the classic Chick-fil-A Sauce that hogs the spotlight most of the time — and rightfully so. Creamy yet tangy, it's so beloved that a shortage sparked mass panic in 2021, and Chick-fil-A has even created sauce-themed merch. Yes, really.

But that doesn't mean Chick-fil-A's other sauces should be totally neglected. It would be a disservice not to try each of the other seven flavors – Polynesian, Honey Mustard, Garden Herb Ranch, Zesty Buffalo, Barbeque, and Sweet & Spicy Sriracha – at some point. While they most obviously pair with nuggets, each one can also put a unique twist on a sandwich or wrap. The only downside is that if you order via the Chick-fil-A app or another delivery service, such as DoorDash or UberEats, you'll only be given the option to add two free sauces for every serving of nuggets or fries. Theoretically, similar restrictions also apply if you choose to dine in, although this may depend on the restaurant and the personal generosity of the worker taking your order. However, the good news is that you can usually add extra to your order for around $0.15 to $0.25 apiece. A small fee for big flavor.