Your Chick-fil-A addiction is about to get faster
So here's what's wild—Chick-fil-A, the chain that already has lines wrapping around the block in places like Colorado Boulevard and Wadsworth, just opened its first drive-thru-only spot in Colorado. It's in Englewood, near Hampden and Santa Fe, which, if you've ever tried to get through that intersection at rush hour, you know is already a special kind of chaos. The idea is to speed things up, make it all about volume. You place your order ahead of time, pull into one of the multiple lanes, and boom, chicken sandwich.
Okay, context—Professor Mark Levine over at DU's Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management is saying this whole drive-thru-only model is a growing trend because it’s efficient. It makes sense, right? Denver’s been growing like crazy, traffic is nuts, and people are always on the go, heading out to hit the slopes or up to the Flatirons. Nobody wants to spend their limited free time waiting in a line that stretches past the parking lot and into the street, even for a spicy deluxe.
### What This Means for Denver
* **Faster Chicken Fix:** If you're one of those people who *needs* their Chick-fil-A, your wait times might actually shrink. This is a big deal if you're trying to grab breakfast before hitting I-70 for a ski day. * **More Traffic?** Even though it's designed to be efficient, adding more cars to an already congested area like Hampden and Santa Fe could just shift the problem. We'll see if the drive-thru-only model actually alleviates traffic or just moves the bottleneck. * **Future of Fast Food:** This concept could spread. Imagine other popular spots like Illegal Pete's or Santiago's following suit. It speaks to how Denver's always adapting to its growth and the pace of life here.
This new Chick-fil-A is a snapshot of Denver right now—always trying to optimize, always bustling, and sometimes, for better or worse, leaning into that car culture. It’s hard to imagine something like this popping up in a walkable neighborhood like the Highlands, but out on the sprawling main arteries, it’s probably a sign of things to come.
Mile high on the wire — altitude and attitude.
The crew on the morning show dives into this kind of stuff all the time—tune in live at mornings.live.