One Chick-fil-A restaurant will open a pop-up rest-station exclusively for food delivery workers beginning on Thursday.
The space, called “the Brake Room,” will offer a seating lounge at its Upper East Side location at Third Avenue by 86th Street. There, drivers can grab free water, coffee or tea while charging their phones between deliveries. It will also feature a restroom and a parking station for bikes.
E-bikes, however, are explicitly prohibited.
The pop-up was created to help delivery workers during the coldest days of the year, according to a spokesperson for the Atlanta-based company. It will close on April 13.
The Upper East Side spot has been among the company’s busiest, according to Katie Joiner, a Chick-fil-A marketing executive who was on-site to visit the Brake Room on Wednesday.
It’s been so busy, in fact, that some Upper East Side residents have complained of cars being triple and quadruple-parked by the location and of sidewalks being blocked by delivery workers' bikes. The website Upper East Site said that the location’s popularity and the ensuing congestion were “causing headaches with no fix in sight.”
Delivery workers stationed across the street from Chick-fil-A in front of a McDonald’s and a Chipotle were unaware of their new designated rest space.
Papa Ngom, 23, said he travels all across Manhattan delivering food because there is no other employment option for him. But, he said, people expect their food on time no matter what — even on days with inclement weather.
“Sometimes I do eight hours,” he said. "It's not easy to tell you the truth, but we don’t have a choice, we have to work.”
Like many other delivery workers, Ngom said the benefit to his job is the ability to set his own hours.
Wadson Dias, who has been making deliveries since 2020, said he was previously a carpenter but quit in order to have more energy to be more social on the weekends. He also said his job as a delivery biker allows him to set his own schedule.
He was intrigued by Chick-fil-A’s Brake Room and welcomed the idea.
“I hope I can go there, it’s something really good for us,” said Dias.
There are more than 65,000 delivery workers in New York City. They have long struggled with finding places to rest and charge their bikes.
In October, the city announced a proposal to convert unused newsstands and other vacant spaces into rest hubs for delivery workers – but those have yet to open.
