Chick-fil-A’s soon-to-be-released Play App has a big focus on gaming

• Chick-fil-A’s upcoming entertainment app has a bigger focus on gaming than first thought
• Launching November 18th, it’ll integrate puzzles, racing and more
• It’s intended to help strengthen Chick-fil-A’s fiercely family-friendly image

If you’re a follower of American fast food news, for whatever reason, you may remember one of the stranger stories of the past few weeks being the announcement that fried chicken restaurant Chick-fil-A was planning its own streaming platform. But as it turns out, the app may have a bit more of a grounded reality – although not without some still slightly out-there additions.

For one, rather than branching out into other franchises, the Chick-fil-A Play App is planned to focus on the restaurant’s mascots – a set of dairy cows. It also looks set to include even more in the way of minigames and other interactive features that’ll be familiar to longtime readers, which are coming to the app set to release November 18th.

While it’s mainly been the fuel for a great deal of laughter or more nuanced observation mulling it over, the news floating around about the Chick-fil-A Play App does indicate it’s taking more than a bit of a cue from others like Netflix and their own foray into integrating the world of gaming into their mobile fare. And while it’s the animations and whatnot that have caught the eye of other outlets, you can probably guess what we’re more intrigued by.

Better than colouring-in

So while it’s tempting to put this all down to some sort of disconnected behind-the-scenes business decision-making, I’d argue this sort of thing makes a strange amount of sense. I mean, I remember back in the day when McDonalds of all places used to have PlayStations set in in their restaurant, which I’m sure always made trying to pry me out of there a major source of stress for my parents.

The fact is an app is (mostly) easier for parents to keep an eye on, conforming to Chick-fil-A’s fiercely family-friendly image, and actually probably a lot cheaper in the long run than printing out tons of activity sheets for more traditional ways to appeal to kids. Of course, that doesn’t make it any less weird when taken in a vacuum, but still worth thinking about how much potential adding entertainment value to a mobile app seems to have.