Chick-fil-A” “Eat Mor Chikin”
Chick-fil-A is one of the largest American fast food restaurant chains and the largest whose specialty is chicken sandwiches. There are 2667 Chick-fil-A restaurant locations in the United States.
Seventy-four years ago, in 1946 to be exact, a man named S. Truett Cathy opened a restaurant in Hapeville, Georgia. He called it Dwarf Grill and later changed it to Dwarf House. His restaurant was located near the now-demolished Ford Motor Company Atlanta Assembly Plant. It was a great location, as many of Cathy’s patrons were from the Assembly Plant.
Hail the pressure-fryer!
By 1961, Cathy was a veteran in the fast-food business. It was in this year that he discovered a pressure-fryer that could cook a chicken sandwich in the same amount of time it took to cook a fast-food hamburger. Shortly after this great discovery, Cathy registered the name Chick-fil-A, Inc.
“We Didn’t Invent the Chicken,
Just the Chicken Sandwich,”
refers to their flagship menu item,
the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich.
Closed on Sundays
Truett Cathy always believed that each and every one of his employees should have a day of rest and worship if they so choose. With that in mind, he made the decision right from the beginning in 1946 to close on Sundays. His first restaurant in Hapeville, Georgia, closed on Sundays and every Chick-fil-A restaurant since has closed on Sundays. Always have, always will.
The first Chick-fil-A opened in 1967, in the food court of the Greenbriar Mall, in a suburb of Atlanta.
Chick-fil-A is proud of its Georgia heritage. They are partners with the greater Atlanta business community, working to create jobs, and generally helping to make Georgia a great place to live and work.
With 2,667 Chick-fil-A restaurants, there’s very likely one near you. They can be found inside airports, malls, college campuses, and in neighbourhoods in 47 states and Washington D.C.
Chick-fil-A was the first restaurant to open in a shopping mall. Finally, hungry shoppers had a place to sit, eat and relax.
Chick-fil-A’s restaurant design in California received recognition putting it among such greats as Apple, Ralph Lauren, and Lululemon.
Although Chick-fil-A was very successful with its shopping mall locations during the 1970s and early 1980s, the chain made the move to freestanding locations in 1986.
This is the Chick-fil-A mascott. Her name is Doodles and she’s been around since the very beginning!
While everyone wants to skip the cooking and dishes, they also want to eat good, healthy food. In 2008, Chick-fil-A became the first fast-food restaurant to become completely trans-fat free. That’s a big step on the path to healthier eating. In February 2014, Chick-fil-A announced plans to serve chicken raised without antibiotics in its restaurants nationwide within five years.
In October 2015, the company opened a three-story 5,000 square feet restaurant in Manhattan that became the largest free-standing Chick-fil-A in the country at that time.
Sometimes, there’s just a darn good reason to break tradition. And that’s precisely what Chic-fil-A did on December 17, 2017, when they opened on a Sunday to prepare meals for passengers left stranded during the power outage at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. They did it again on January 13, 2019, in Mobile, Alabama when they opened on Sunday to honor a birthday wish of a 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy and autism. And that’s just what good corporate citizens do.
Chick-fil-A’s business model is simple: keep the focus on a simple menu and on good customer service. Their continued attention to excellent customer service has allowed Chick-fil-A to consistently lead the fast food industry in customer satisfaction.
Their website states, “The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect – regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender.”
Chick-fil-A grossed an average of $4.8 million
per restaurant in 2016
Whataburger was second with
$2.7 million per restaurant.
Eat Mor Chikin is the chain’s well-known advertising slogan, created in 1995. The slogan is often seen in advertisements, featuring Holstein dairy cows that are often seen wearing or holding signs that read: “Eat Mor Chikin”
In 2016, along with the cows, ads included famous people in history in a campaign called Chicken for Breakfast. It’s not as crazy as you think.
Gloria Sauvé
Communications and Marketing