David B. Farmer, the company’s vice president for menu strategy, said Chick-fil-A expected the Manhattan store, at 37th Street and Avenue of the Americas, to have more traffic than any of its other more than 1,900 stores. In fact, the company already refers to the next New York location, which will open next year at 46th Street and Avenue of the Americas, as “the relief valve.” (Chick-fil-A has a location with a limited menu in a food court at New York University.)

To keep up with anticipated demand, the company’s new store will have eight registers and two more on standby to handle overflow. And it has trained 18 employees to use hand-held devices to take orders from customers waiting in the line that is expected when it officially opens on Saturday.

The company is well aware that many New Yorkers have never heard of it; it says more than three-fourths of the 160 people hired to staff the Manhattan location were similarly unfamiliar.

It also knows that the New Yorkers who have heard of Chick-fil-A are most likely to know about it because of the controversy raised by comments made in 2012 by its chief executive, Dan T. Cathy, expressing his opposition to same-sex marriage.