Chick-fil-A offers high-quality chicken, sandwiches, french fries, and more, and it has only two main downfalls that likely prevent consumers from ranking it in first place. First, the chain is not open on Sundays, and second, the chain can get a little pricey. In fact, consumers are reported to be paying upward of $15 for a single meal.
Luckily, we live in the age of social media, and it has never been easier to get online and find a hack for getting good food on a budget, or discover someone spilling the beans about the secret menu items some franchises offer. The accessibility of insider tips for Chick-fil-A orders are no different. In fact, content creators on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram alike have shared a myriad of hacks for enhancing your Chick-fil-A order — and sometimes even saving money while doing it. Here are some menu hacks that are worth trying out the next time you head over to your local Chick-fil-A.
The trendy bowl hack
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If you’re ever scrolling on social media, its unlikely that you haven’t seen this trendy bowl hack pop up on your feed. The trend began with a TikTok user and Chick-fil-A employee who posted her employee meal on her account, likely with no idea that the video would go on to get more than 32 million views. For this do-it-yourself Chick-fil-A bowl, you need nuggets, french fries, macaroni and cheese, ranch sauce, and honey barbecue sauce.
Into a salad bowl, the trend’s creator pours her french fries, cup of macaroni and cheese, and a 12 count of chicken nuggets. After pouring the sauces on top, she closes the lid and shakes it up, making a fast-food-staple salad of sorts. The meal went viral all over social media, with many other accounts posting widely and reviewing the trend, including famous FoodToker Keith Lee, who gave the hack a 9.5 out of 10.
You can make a similar bowl by combining chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, and the zesty buffalo sauce. This spinoff of the original bowl hack is the Chick-fil-A version of buffalo mac and cheese, and you can make it the exact way you make the other bowl — just without the fries.
Make your chicken saucy
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Some people like their chicken a bit more saucy than others, and if you feel like that at Chick-fil-A, this is the hack for you. For a Chick-fil-A take on boneless chicken wings, you can toss your nuggets in sauces to fully coat them and turn them into wet nuggets. Social media food content creators recommend a combination of ranch the zesty buffalo sauce, or of ranch and Chick-fil-A’s Polynesian sauce. But, of course, you can use any sauce of your liking. The goal of this hack is to make the chicken saucy enough without the need for dipping.
Use this hack to elevate your chicken sandwich as well, following the same tips. A Chick-fil-A sandwich comes in a small bag, which you can use to pour sauces over your chicken filet and coat it evenly by shaking (similar to the use of the salad container in the previous hack).
Get a combo on a budget
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A social media creator clued their 1.1 million followers in on this budget-friendly Chick-fil-A hack. At Chick-fil-A, you can get a combo meal for a bit of a cheaper price if you just order in a different way. Instead of ordering the combo directly, order a kid’s chicken tender meal with a bun on the side (you can order a side of pickles, too). The kid’s meal comes out to about $7, whereas the full meal comes to around $10, so you would save around $3 by ordering this way, which can add up over time. The brand’s pricing varies depending on location, so the amount you save will be different from location to location.
In a similar vein, you can order a four-count chicken tender entrée and two buns on the side for less than what it would cost to order two chicken sandwiches at Chick-fil-A. This way, you construct the sandwiches to your own liking, and you get a little more bang for your buck.
Make a loaded sandwich
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This one is for all the people who love everything-but-the-kitchen-sink cookies, or those day-after-Thanksgiving sandwiches, where you pile on a ton of toppings between two slices of bread and hope for the best during that first bite. Chick-fil-A is best known for its chicken, its macaroni and cheese, and its waffle fries, and this sandwich combines all three to make the ultimate loaded sandwich that is sure to leave you full and satisfied.
The sandwich is said to have been created by an social media user in 2022. Onto a chicken sandwich goes a pile of macaroni and cheese. But before that, you have to add a few french fries underneath the chicken filet, right onto the bottom bun. You can make the sandwich your own by adding your sauce of choice to the top bun. Tip: Try using the saucy chicken method above before loading this sandwich up, so your sandwich gets an even coating of sauce before your first bite.
Order breakfast from the secret menu
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Sometimes, the best part of any fast food chain is when they have a secret menu for you to choose from — it’s elusive, it feels exclusive, and most times, it’s just delicious. Chick-fil-A is no different. And when you are having a craving for the most important meal of the day, Chick-fil-A’s secret menu is sure to satisfy you. You can order a chicken, egg, and cheese — the chain’s twist on a classic meat, egg, and cheese — but instead of the chicken, you can ask for a spicy filet if it’s available near you. No worries if not — remember, you can make your chicken saucy on your own.
Other small but make-or-break-level hacks are to add honey to the chick-n-minis. These are bite-sized chicken nuggets in mini bread rolls that already have honey butter on them, so adding honey will give that extra sweet kick to start your morning out heartily. If you’re feeling particularly lucky, you can try to snag a breakfast sample. To do this, you have to head to your local Chick-fil-A at the perfect time — before 10:30 a.m. when the chain stops serving breakfast — and simply ask the employee if there are any breakfast samples available.
Some locations will give you a sample for free, and others may ask you to make a purchase before claiming your sample. The breakfast sample typically includes two chicken biscuit sandwich meals, but this will vary by location.
Grab a classic comfort sandwich
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Grilled cheeses are a staple of comfort food cuisine — they are warm, simple, and delicious. But there is always room to make a grilled cheese your own, by customizing the bread type, the cheese, and deciding whether to grill with butter or mayo, which is widely debated for which makes a better grilled cheese. If you’re not in the mood to make your own grilled cheese, though, you can order one from Chick-fil-A.
The restaurant doesn’t technically have a grilled cheese on the menu, but it is easy to order a grilled cheese without actually ordering a grilled cheese. Instead, you can order a toasted bun with the cheese of your choosing. Unfortunately, this might just turn out to be a cheese sandwich, which certainly is not ideal.
To prevent this, try asking for the bun to be extra toasted; that way, the cheese is likely to melt a bit more on the extra hot bread and you will have a sandwich more closely resembling a grilled cheese. Maybe Chick-fil-A isn’t the perfect place for a grilled cheese, but it will certainly satisfy the craving in a pinch.
DIY the drink menu
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Sometimes, the standard soft drink or milkshake menu at a fast food restaurant can get a little boring. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to spice up the drink menu at chains like Chick-fil-A. For example, if you’re in the mood for a root beer with a bit of a twist, you can make your own root beer float at Chick-fil-A. All you have to do is order an ice cream cone, but rather than putting it in a cone, ask the employee to put it in a soda cup so you can top it off with root beer (or even Coca Cola).
You can also make an orange creamsicle float if root beer isn’t to your taste. You should still get the ice cream cone, but simply get orange soda poured over it, instead. Or, for those more in the mood for less ice cream and more of a tangy beverage, sneak a peek at the Chick-fil-A secret menu to order a strawberry lemonade. Since the chain already sells lemonade, and it separately sells strawberry milkshakes, you can order a lemonade and ask the employee to mix in the strawberry milkshake toppings. This way, you can have a drink that is refreshing and fruity.
Order a well-balanced chicken side salad
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Chick-fil-A currently offers three entrée-level salads: a market salad with blue cheese and various fruits; a cobb salad with corn, cheese, bacon, egg, and tomatoes; and a spicy Southwest salad with cheese, tomatoes, corn, beans, and various peppers. These are solid salad offerings, but Chick-fil-A fans have found that the proportion of toppings to lettuce on the entrée salads are not ideal for a perfectly balanced salad at every bite. The solution? Customize a side salad.
You can add a 12-count chicken nugget if you love to have a protein on your salad, as well as adding a myriad of other toppings for less than $1 each — including anything from bacon bits to black beans to strawberries. Plus, you can choose your own sauce as the dressing, and the topping to lettuce ratio will be closer to 1-to-1. This hack helps you have a little bit of everything in each bite.
Get a two-part entrée for a lower cost
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Food content creators are nothing if not crafty about saving money, so this hack is the best way to get a full entrée and a little extra treat without breaking the bank. You can order any of the entrée salads that Chick-fil-A offers, and rather than the grilled chicken strips or breaded chicken nuggets that you would normally add, ask for a full chicken filet on top of the salad. On the side, order a classic buttered bun.
Now, if you’ve gotten this far in the article, you are already an expert, so you know where this is going — once you get the salad, you can remove the chicken filet from the top and place it in between your bread slices. You’ll have a full entrée-sized salad and a chicken sandwich on the side, all for less than it would cost you to order the two items separately. Don’t forget to ask for any sauces on the side, in case you want to sauce up your chicken filet before forming your sandwich.
Elevate your dessert experience
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Dessert is often the best part of every meal, and when you combine a vanilla cone from Chick-fil-A with a brownie or cookie on the side, it cannot get any better. Ask for your vanilla ice cream in a soda cup instead of on a cone, and then you can crumble either the cookie or brownie –- or both –- over top of the ice cream to make your very own ice cream sundae. The chain even carries chocolate syrup, so you could take your sundae a step further by asking for a drizzle on top.
If you are looking for a sweet drink instead, you can use the same hack for a milkshake. Order a cookie milkshake with a chocolate chip cookie on the side. When you crumble that cookie into the milkshake, you end up with a double cookie crunch milkshake that is sure to be the perfect dessert after your Chick-fil-A meal.
