Laravel 5: Retrieve JSON array from $request

You need to change your Ajax call to

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "/people",
    data: '[{ "name": "John", "location": "Boston" }, { "name": "Dave", "location": "Lancaster" }]',
    contentType: "json",
    processData: false,
    success:function(data) {
        $('#save_message').html(data.message);
    } 
});

change the dataType to contentType and add the processData option.

To retrieve the JSON payload from your controller, use:

dd(json_decode($request->getContent(), true));

instead of

dd($request->all());