chick fil a drive thru worker
Chick-fil-A customers received free food in the face of a system outage.
Brynn Anderson/AP Photo
  • Chick-fil-A was unable to process payments for roughly an hour on Friday. 
  • The outage was tied to the chain’s third-party payment system. 
  • Many Chick-fil-A customers ended up getting free food when they were unable to pay.
  • Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.

Many Chick-fil-A customers faced an unexpected disruption on Friday. 

A representative for Chick-fil-A confirmed to Insider that the chain’s third-party payment vendor experienced an outage across many businesses that they serve on Friday. For roughly an hour, Chick-fil-A locations’ payment systems were unable to process payments. 

The problem has been resolved, and restaurants are once again processing payments as normal as of 1:45 pm ET on Friday, the representative said. 

For some customers however, there was a silver lining. Many Chick-fil-A locations started handing out free meals during the outage. 

Chick-fil-A has some of the longest drive-thru lines in fast food due to its immense popularity. The lengthy lines can create disruption even without an outage creating further confusion. 

Insider recently reported that Chick-fil-A is facing three separate lawsuits from local businesses who allege the chain's drive-thru lines are causing problems. The chain is working to speed up drive-thru lines by having workers take orders on iPads, as well as rolling out new drive-thru designs and opening more locations. 

Read the original article on Business Insider