Forget the goofy Holstein cows who beg you to “Eat Mor Chikin.”

When it comes to feeding the public, a Chick-fil-A restaurant is all business, though a casual observer might not realize how far the fast-food chain goes to provide a pleasantly consistent experience.

Nearly 36,000 hungry customers patronize the Chick-fil-A restaurant on Talmadge Road in Toledo each week, and when they arrive they can be certain that the food is delicious, their order accurate and prompt, and they’ll receive a smile and friendly greeting.

None of it happens by accident.

That’s because a Chick-fil-A restaurant runs with the precision of a finely-tuned Swiss watch. Everything is timed — sometimes down to the second — and the employees who work there are selected for their character, attitude, and desire to see the business succeed.

“I’ve worked at other restaurants and they’re not like this. If it wasn’t for Chick-fil-A I would not be the person I am. I wouldn’t be this happy,” said Katie Wilkins, an employee who takes orders at the drive-thru lanes.

“When you talk about quick service this is different than a J. Alexander’s where you want to sit down for an hour and a half and enjoy some appetizers,” said franchisee Jonathan Winn, owner of the Talmadge Road Chick-fil-A. Recently Mr. Winn opened a second location on Secor Road to ease customer demand at his Talmadge store.

“It’s like, ‘I need to get back to work,’ ‘I need to get back to school,’ ‘I’m on my way home,’ or ‘I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.’ There’s a reason they’re coming to Chick-fil-A, there’s a reason they’re coming through the drive-thru. It’s because they want to get out of here quick,” Mr. Winn said.

Last fall on a Wednesday, Mr. Winn agreed to pull the curtain back on his Talmadge store. The inside-look revealed how the store maintains its efficiency and courteous attitude in the face of a lunchtime rush that at times can exceed 500 customers in just a two-hour window.

The experience was an eye-opener with the front counter providing the first bit of camouflage.

Customers entering the store around 11 a.m. only see a pleasant and grateful face eager to take their order, no matter how complex. And an offer most likely will be made to bring the food to the diner when it’s ready.

Congratulations. You have just experienced the first step in Chick-fil-A’s subtle strategy — dubbed Microburst of Hospitality — designed to create customer loyalty and generate repeat visits.

Mr. Winn explained that employees are taught to do a handful of things each time they engage with a customer.

“We want to create eye contact, we want to share a smile with every guest,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re speaking enthusiastically, and we want to stay connected throughout the course of the transaction.

“It’s less about your sweet tea or waffle fries than, ‘How are you doing personally?’” the franchisee said. “You’re also going to see an approach we call Second-mile Service, which is a biblical concept out of Matthew 5:41 that says, ‘If someone asks you to go one mile, you go two,’” said Mr. Winn, a former pastor at a church in Akron.

Going the second mile equates to “opening the door for guests, it’s clearing trays and trash, it’s dropping butter mints on tables, or you’ll see us refreshing drinks and getting refills in the dining room, giving suckers to kids,” Mr. Winn said.

If the microbursts are done correctly and consistently, 10 or 20 seconds of interaction per day can turn into five-minute long conversations if someone comes back at the end of the week. That “can turn into friendships if the guests are coming back all the time,” Mr. Winn said.

The strategy is effective.

Computerized reports tell a store how many customers served are repeat customers. “So in our current restaurant, half of our guests eat with us every week,” Mr. Winn said, reviewing a report with reams of data.

“I don’t know of too many restaurants that I’ve been to that I would go to once a week,” he added.

Behind the front counter wall is the kitchen, which is compact but well-designed for maximum efficiency.

And as the 11:30 lunchtime window approaches, it is buzzing.

About 15 employees occupy prep stations, working in rhythm to produce always just enough sandwiches, waffle fries, salads, and other menu items.

“This is not a place to work if you don’t want to move quickly,” says Derrick Fraley, the restaurant’s kitchen director who often logs his workday movement with a Fitbit monitor. His daily average: 20,000 steps.

iPads are ubiquitous throughout the kitchen, telling employees what to make, when to make it, and how many to make.

When you are known for chicken, nothing about its preparation is left to chance.

Chick-fil-A chicken, about 1,200 pounds, arrives daily in a frozen state. But it soon goes into special thawing cabinets at a precise temperature so that when it emerges it tastes fresh.

Once thawed, the all-white meat breast is hand filleted, then dipped in a milk wash, hand-breaded with a seasoning coating, and then cooked.

“It goes from a raw to a ready-to-eat product in 3½ minutes,” Mr. Winn said.

The number of chicken fillets prepared are according to need in a 15-minute window. An iPad tells each cook how much product to make until the next 15 minute window arrives and the process begins all-over again.

“So, here, you have 12 sandwiches in the chute, because that’s what we’re selling right now but we’re constantly replacing, constantly replacing,” Mr. Winn said.

Waffle fries also are prepared from orders and data coming from the counter registers, but their preparation is an even tighter window. “We have five minutes from when they are made to when they have to be consumed.

If they’re beyond five minutes, we have to destroy them,” Mr. Winn said.

The restaurant, which also runs a bustling catering business, goes through 1,200 pounds of chicken a day, and 800 pounds potatoes.

Salads also run on an iPad clock though they have a little more leeway.

Many fast-food chains make salads ahead of time and then store them in a cooler.

Chick-fil-A could do that, but chooses not to, Mr. Winn said. Salads are assembled according to demand.

“Everything we have here is incredibly fresh. Our produce isn’t bagged stuff. These are heads of lettuce, cut and washed,” he said. After they are cut, the lettuce gets a antimicrobial bath that is precisely timed.

Back out to the side of the front counter, the drive-thru area is bustling as 11:30 approaches. A small team of nine employees have assembled to make sure drive-thru runs without glitches.

It may seem like a lot of employees for one aspect, but it is to insure speed and accuracy.

“Everybody has a different role and responsibility. And if they get it wrong, then everything stops working correctly,” Mr. Winn said.

Orders are taken, paid for, and checked for accuracy. There are workers who bag the food, stuff the bag with condiments and re-check the order, engage the customer via the outside speaker, take the payment, pass the food to the customer, and make beverages.

But around 11:45, the drive-thru team deploys their secret weapon — the four-member outdoor order-taking team armed with iPads and dressed in Chick-fil-A cold weather gear.

The crew includes Miss Wilkins and her co-workers, Kelsey Beattie, Hannah Brandner, and Caroline Wert. Their job is to move things along rapidly by taking orders before a vehicle arrives at the outdoor speaker.

Even though it is 40 degrees out, the outdoor crew is chipper and charming.

Miss Brandner said good treatment by management and competitive pay keeps employees happy, which in turn makes it easier to spread happiness to customers.

“People always ask why we have such good service and it’s because we are treated so well by our management that we treat our customers well,” she said.

At noon, things continue to flow easily but by 12:15 p.m. vehicles are backed up three deep. At 12:25 it reaches four deep and by 12:45 the lines are five-deep with vehicles.

Yet the outdoor crew handle it with ease, moving cars through the line quickly with the kitchen matching their pace.

They push 146 cars through the drive through between noon and 1 p.m. The indoor crew handled 115 cars between 11 to noon. Overall, Mr. Winn considers it a slow lunch crowd.

Still, between drive-thru and indoor service the restaurant served nearly 500 customers over the lunch window. Not bad for a Wednesday, he adds.

Contact Jon Chavez at jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.

First Published March 24, 2018, 10:00 a.m.