In the 1995 film Hackers, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Lee Miller’s characters lead a ragtag group of teen hackers to catch a fellow hacker running a heist. The theft involved a computer program that shaves a few cents off every transaction a company makes and transfers it to the thief. This is described as not enough to be noticed in each transaction, but over millions and millions of them, enough to live a life of moneyed ease.
The 1999 classic Office Space involved a similar scam. This is widely known as “salami slicing.” Some could also call these penny heists.
An Atlanta woman suspects she’s identified a 2025 version of the penny heist. The revelation occurred to J (@thepurplepantman) after she ordered Chick-fil-A.
In a TikTok about her suspicions, J begins, “I think what’s going under the rug right now is a lot of people are penny laundering.”
She explains that she initially was ordering breakfast on Chick-fil-A’s app. Then she changed her mind and ordered it in the drive-thru instead. At the drive-thru, it cost $7.38.
The price in the app, J says, did not match.
“It was 5 cents more through the drive-thru, to order it in the drive-thru, than it was to order it on the app. And that had me thinking,” she continues.
‘They Get Millions Of Dollars, Right?’
Then J’s tone turns conspiratorial. She uses a 50-cent raise as an example. Per J, people don’t think it’s much money. But over the course of a year, it comes to over $1,000.
She believes businesses can make “millions” by doing something similar. According to her, Chick-fil-A could charge each customer a few cents extra. If they serve 500 customers a day, that’ll add up to an enormous sum.
“What if they just charge everybody 5 cents? They get millions of dollars. They get millions of dollars, right?” she says.
Many who commented on her post, which has nearly 430,000 views as of this writing, are of a similar mindset.
“I started penny pinching & my own income has expanded…” Mariah wrote. “So yes bestie, if the pennies add up for me, it’s adding up for them by the thousands.”
Nicholas pointed to the famed example of American Airlines removing a single olive from its salads and saving $40,000.
Others blasted what they see as corporate greed. “I have literally been saying this. Then people are like you really that cheap. No they are really that greedy, y’all need to stop ignoring that,” Daija Danielle commented.
Some recalled the alleged scam’s resemblance to fictional accounts.
“Yall ever seen Office Space?” HeyItsLauren wondered.
Why Are Chick-Fil-A’s Prices Different In App And In-Store?
It is true that salami slicing/penny heists and penny laundering, as J dubs it, are technically possible. If the unidentified Chick-fil-A in question altered prices to evade taxes or as a false advertising scheme, this could trigger civil or criminal liability.
Chick-fil-A did not respond to BroBible’s emailed inquiry sent Tuesday afternoon.
But there are also reasonable explanations for the price discrepancy J observed at Chick-fil-A.
Three years ago, someone posed a similar question about price discrepancies at Chick-fil-A on Reddit. Responses there pointed to differences in delivery fees and delays updating prices as potential explanations.
“If it’s from the same store, it should be the same price for mobile or in person ordering,” one redditor countered.
Another argued back that it could simply be “human error.”
The company itself acknowledges that sometimes prices differ by location. The company has a unique ownership structure wherein it owns the real estate, and different individuals and companies pay a franchise fee to run it.
According to Chick-fil-A’s website, “Sometimes different Chick-fil-A locations have different pricing. Selecting a different store may change the price of the menu item you selected or your order.”
J did not reply to a direct message sent via TikTok.
@thepurplepantman They tell you not to care about pennies but they do