Chick-fil-A Fought This Small Town to Make a Mega Restaurant—And Lost

If you live anywhere near a Chick-fil-A, you know the madness that is the one-hour lunch rush. The parade of hungry customers can seem neverending and even holds the potential to keep you trapped in a parking spot or intersection much longer than anticipated.

Even with the drive-thru speed and efficiency Chick-fil-A has seemed to master, there’s just no way to dish out hot and fresh chicken sandwiches to hundreds without a bit of traffic. In fact, over the past few years, several Chick-fil-A franchises have faced lawsuits from neighboring business owners over fast-food traffic interfering with regular business operations.

Chick-fil-A’s solution? Make the restaurants bigger.

Back in July, the chicken chain announced plans to relocate and expand an existing restaurant location, expanding the original store layout by over 2,000 square feet. The plans included a 300-square-foot playground, a massive outdoor dining area, and a drive-thru with the ability to service 43 car-fulls of customers.

But neighbors of the small-town Collierville, Tennessee location weren’t on board. As it turns out, there was already a heavy overflow of fast-food traffic onto busy main roads at the restaurant’s current size, and locals didn’t want to see the streets any more congested.

Over the past week, more tension had been building around the case as local officials reviewed mounds of traffic reports and petitions from concerned Tennessee residents. After months of back and forth, a final decision about the "mega" Chick-fil-A was made on Monday.

Why Chick-fil-A Can’t Build Its Mega Restaurant in Tennessee

Residents expressed their concerns about Chick-fil-A’s massive new restaurant causing car pile-ups and road clogging in a Collierville Town meeting, and leaders listened.

Although the Planning Commission initially voted in favor of the project, on Jan. 8, Collierville city officials ultimately shot down the proposed restaurant build in a 5-1 vote.

Now, if there’s any company we’d hand-select to operate a 43-car drive-thru, it would be Chick-fil-A, but still, Tennessee locals weren’t willing to put up with the headache of major traffic blockages just so a multi-billion dollar business could “sell more chicken.”

Maybe Chick-fil-A will get to cut the ribbon on a mega-restaurant one day, but when they do, we're pretty sure it won’t be in Collierville, Tennessee.