Chick-fil-A and McDonald's are taking different approaches to who handles customer orders, Fortune reports, a divergence that highlights how the largest U.S. quick-service operators are rethinking front-counter and drive-thru labor.

The two chains — McDonald's, the largest U.S. burger chain by systemwide sales, and Chick-fil-A, the category leader in average unit volumes — have landed on separate answers to the same operating question. Neither company has detailed identical rollout plans, and the split comes as operators across the segment face sustained pressure on labor costs and speed-of-service metrics.

What does the divergence mean for operators?

For franchise-heavy systems like McDonald's, decisions about order-taking flow through owner-operators who control their own technology and staffing investments. Chick-fil-A's model, built around single-unit operators running individual restaurants, gives the chain a different path to standardizing how orders are taken.

The split matters economically. Order-taking sits at the intersection of labor percentage and throughput: every order handled without a dedicated employee at the counter or drive-thru window shifts the labor equation, while delays at the same touchpoint directly drag on drive-thru times.

Why now?

The question of who takes the order has grown more urgent as chains weigh digital kiosks, app ordering and remote or AI-assisted order-taking against traditional staffing. How each chain answers it affects not only headcount but training, equipment spending and the franchisee-level cost structure that ultimately determines whether new formats get adopted across a system.

Fortune's full report details the specific approaches each chain has chosen; operators will be watching whether either model delivers measurable gains in speed and labor efficiency that the rest of the segment can replicate.