The fast food industry is brutally competitive, so restaurants do whatever they can to attract customers to their locations.
After McDonald’s released the Happy Goggles in Sweden allowing kids to reuse the Happy Meal box as a virtual reality viewer, Chick-Fil-A has come up with yet another innovative promotion.
Having lunch with the family at Chick-Fil-A now comes with an exciting challenge: if you want to take a time-out from any form of technology, the restaurant offers you a box called the “Cell Phone Coop” that can help you and your family test you electronic restraint.
If your group wants to participate in the challenge, all of your mobile phones are to be turned off and place in the “coop.” If you finish the meal without opening the box, each member of the group gets an ice cream cone on the house.
Chick-Fil-A’s promotion is more subtle than it seems at first because it addresses more powerful trends ruling the American family today. For example, the fact that mobile phones have become so ubiquitous that it’s no longer a surprise to see a 4-year-old tapping away on a device’s screen.
The Pew Research Center found that roughly 91 percent of adults and 78 percent of kids aged 12 to 17 own a mobile phone. Without a doubt, these small electronics have taken over a great deal of our lives, and Chick-Fil-A attempts to give you some of it back.
At the same time, the restaurant wants to encourage families to eat together, as studies continue to discover new benefits of family dinners, in addition to the fact that they increase health and overall happiness in children and adults alike.
Children, in particular, have a lot to benefit from these family meals. Reports suggest they can improve a child’s vocabulary size, self-esteem and test performance – almost as if eating together has magical powers.
Thirdly, Chick-Fil-A’s promotion challenges the myth that people can multitask. According to multiple studies, multitasking is, in fact, more like “switchtasking,” as our brains don’t process tasks simultaneously, but it keeps going back and forth between them.
Parents who believe that keeping their mobile phones on the dinner table doesn’t take away important aspects of the dinner experience are just lying to themselves. But a lot of families have set this goal of distraction-free dining, so Chick-Fil-A wants to help.
After deciding to remain closed on Sundays so its employees can spend some quality time with their families, Chick-Fil-A’s new dive into promoting traditional family dinners might win the hearts of its customers even more.
Image Source: WND
