The ACSI ranks various types of American businesses including cleaning products, online retail, supermarkets, cars and food manufacturing.
On Monday, Chick-fil-A was ranked as the top full-service restaurant by the ACSI for the eighth year in a row. The restaurant chain, known for its chicken-filled meals and waffle fries, scored 83 points out of 100 by the ACSI for customer satisfaction, despite the fact that overall satisfaction with fast-food restaurants fell 2.6%.
The ACSI found that full-service restaurants had a stable score of 80 out of 100 but that overall satisfaction with fast food restaurants dropped 2.6%, down to 76 out of 100.
30 December 2019, 22:01 GMT
“The large group of smaller full-service restaurants experiences substantial deterioration in mobile app quality, contributing to a steep decline for the industry overall, which tumbles 8% to 78,” says Forrest Morgeson, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Michigan State University and the Director of Research Emeritus at the ACSI.
“Amid the pandemic, restaurants needed to quickly up their game in the mobile arena. With fewer resources, smaller chains and independent restaurants are offering apps that aren’t making the grade per customer. In contrast, positive shifts in both mobile app quality and reliability for several larger chains appear to reflect major app updates for these bigger industry players.”
The American sandwich chain Jimmy John’s was the runner-up in the ranking of food industry satisfaction with a score of 79 in terms of customer satisfaction. Domino’s and KFC were also favored among customers for their service and scored 78 out of 100. Chipotle took the fifth spot on the list of fast food restaurants with high scores with Panera following Chipotle.
However, the ACSI also found that once again, full-service restaurants were preferred over fast-food chains in terms of service. Meanwhile Chick-fil-A, which has more than 2,600 locations across 47 states, has not been a stranger to controversy. In late 2019, Chick-fil-A announced that they would no longer donate to charities that promote anti-LGBTQ missions after boycotts took aim at the company for donating more than $1.8 million to such organizations.
But in 2020, after Chick-fil-A’s former president and CEO Tim Tassopoulos hinted that the company’s philanthropy would turn away from anti-LGBTQ charities following the backlash, the fast food chain didn’t exactly make any promises on the issue.
“There’s no question we know that, as we go into new markets, we need to be clear about who we are,” Tassopoulos said in 2020. “There are lots of articles and newscasts about Chick-fil-A, and we thought we needed to be clear about our message.”
“No organization will be excluded from future consideration–faith-based or non-faith-based,” Chick-fil-A President and COO Tim Tassopoulos told VICE in a statement.