The fast food chain now has a “Cell Phone Coop” box as a part of a campaign to encourage people to spend time together.
Chick-fil-A has now started a new family togetherness campaign that is meant to help people to stop distracting themselves with their mobile phones throughout a meal and pay attention to each other, instead.
The new “Cell Phone Coop” is meant to encourage people to tuck mobile devices away during meals.
The company has noticed how many families continue to use their mobile phones during the length of the meal and is hoping that those families will take part in developing a time in which they put the devices away and remember that there are people right in front of them that they care about. The campaign will provide families that use the Cell Phone Coop boxes with “distraction free” rewards such as free ice cream cones for every participating member.
The idea for the Cell Phone Coop for mobile phones started at an Atlanta branch of the fast food chain.
The boxes feature instructions that tell members of the family using the table to place their phones on silent before they add the mobile devices to the box and seal it. For those who have taken part, an ice cream cone is given as a reward.
As much as this may sound like a gimmicky type of promotion, it is not without a deeper purpose. A study conducted in the United Kingdom in 2014 showed that 22 percent of families who bring mobile devices to meals with them experience a reduced ability to conduct a proper conversation and enjoy quality time as a group.
In a society in which we are already pressed for time and rushing around on different schedules, meals tend to be some of the few opportunities that exist for bringing an entire family into a single place at the same time. If those times allow mobile phones to hold the attention of the family members, it takes away from that time, according to the study. Therefore, Chick-fil-A is hoping to reverse that trend, if only while its customers are within the restaurant locations.
