Chick-fil-A
Chick-fil-A, Inc. is an American fast food restaurant chain and the largest chain specializing in chicken sandwiches. Headquartered in College Park, Georgia, Chick-fil-A operates restaurants across 48 states, as well as in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The company also has operations in Canada and the United Kingdom, and previously had restaurants in South Africa. Chick-fil-A has announced plans to open stores in both the UK and Singapore in late 2025. The restaurant has a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner menu. The chain also provides catering services. Chick-fil-A calls its specialty the "original chicken sandwich". It is a piece of deep-fried breaded boneless chicken breast served on a toasted bun with two slices of dill pickle, or with lettuce, tomato, and cheese.
Many of the company's values are influenced by the Christian religious beliefs of its late founder, S. Truett Cathy, a devout Southern Baptist. Reflecting a commitment to Sunday Sabbatarianism, all restaurants are closed for business on Sundays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day. The company's conservative opposition to same-sex marriage has caused controversy; the company began to loosen its stance on this issue from 2019. Even among numerous controversies and boycott attempts, the 2022 American Customer Satisfaction Index found that Chick-fil-A remained the country's favorite fast food chain for the eighth consecutive year, and it has the highest per store sales of any fast food chain in the nation.
History
The chain's origin can be traced to the Dwarf Grill, a restaurant opened by S. Truett Cathy in 1946 in the Atlanta suburb of Hapeville, Georgia. The original store was located near the Ford Motor Company Atlanta Assembly Plant, a source of many of the restaurant's patrons for years. It was later remodeled, reopening in 2022.In 1961, after 15 years in the fast-food business, Cathy found a pressure fryer that could cook a chicken sandwich at the same time it took to cook a hamburger. Following this discovery, he registered the name Chick-fil-A, Inc. The company's trademarked slogan, "We Didn't Invent the Chicken, Just the Chicken Sandwich," refers to their flagship menu item, the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. Though Chick-fil-A was the first national chain to make a fast, fried chicken sandwich its flagship item, it has been shown that Cathy's claim to have "invented the chicken sandwich" is false.
From 1964 to 1967, the sandwich was licensed to over fifty eateries, including Waffle House and the concession stands of the new Houston Astrodome. The Chick-Fil-A sandwich was withdrawn from sale at other restaurants when the first dedicated location opened in 1967, in the food court of the Greenbriar Mall in Atlanta.
The chain expanded in the 1970s and early 1980s by opening new locations in suburban malls' food courts. The first freestanding location was opened April 16, 1986, on North Druid Hills Road in Atlanta, Georgia, and the company began to focus more on stand-alone units rather than food courts. Although it has expanded outward from its original geographic base, most new restaurants are located in suburban areas of the Southern US.
Since 1997, the Atlanta-based company has sponsored the Peach Bowl, an annual college football bowl game played in Atlanta on New Year's Eve. Chick-fil-A also sponsors the Southeastern Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference of college athletics.
In 2008, Chick-fil-A was among the first fast-food restaurants to become completely free of trans fats.
In October 2015, the company opened its largest restaurant, a three-story restaurant in Manhattan.
File:Chick-fil-A Sauce Sign at Spotsylvania Towne Centre.jpg|thumb|Sign posted at the Spotsylvania Towne Centre Chick-fil-A location in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Chick-fil-A Sauce was invented at this location in 1983.
On December 17, 2017, Chick-fil-A broke their tradition and opened on a Sunday to prepare meals for passengers left stranded during a power outage at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport; further, on January 13, 2019, a Chick-fil-A franchise in Mobile, Alabama, opened on Sunday to honor a birthday wish of a 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy and autism.
On February 13, 2023, they began offering their first non-meat sandwich, a breaded cauliflower sandwich.
In May 2023, Chick-fil-A closed its original location in Greenbriar Mall, without stating a reason.
Business model
Chick-fil-A's business strategy involves a focus on a small menu and on customer service. While many fast food chains offer many dishes, Chick-fil-A's is focused on selling chicken sandwiches. The name's capital A is intended to indicate that their chicken is "grade A top quality". The company's emphasis on customer service is reported to have contributed to its success and growth in the United States.Chick-fil-A builds and owns its restaurants. Chick-fil-A franchisees need a US$10,000 initial investment. Franchisees are selected and trained, a process that can take months.
Chick-fil-A grossed an average of $6.71 million per restaurant in 2022, despite opening only 6 days a week, the highest sales of all fast-food restaurants in the United States..
In 2019, Chick-fil-A reported $11.3 billion in sales in the United States, behind only McDonald's with $40.4 billion in sales that year.
To compete with Chick-fil-A, the fried chicken chain Popeyes, followed by others, introduced a fried chicken sandwich in 2019, a marketing trend known as the Chicken Sandwich Wars.
Retail sale of sauces
In the spring of 2020, Chick-fil-A test-trialed the sale of two of their dipping sauces at some supermarkets in Florida, with all profits earmarked for a scholarship fund for the company's store-level employees. The trial was considered successful, and distribution was expanded nationwide by 2021. Two more sauces were added in 2023.In October 2022, the company trialed expansion of the program to include its salad dressings in the Cincinnati metropolitan area and in parts of Tennessee, and expanded nationwide in spring 2023.
In January 2025, Chick-fil-A announced plans to centralize its lemonade production by moving it from its restaurant locations to a single, automated facility in Santa Clarita, California. This new plant is capable of processing between 30 and 35 truckloads of lemons daily, with each truckload containing 50,000 pounds of lemons.
Financial performance
In 2024, Chick-fil-A reported systemwide sales of $22 billion, ranking it among the top three U.S. restaurant chains by sales, alongside McDonald's and Starbucks. The chain achieved this with 3,109 locations, compared to McDonald's 13,559 U.S. locations. Chick-fil-A's average unit volume was $7.5 million per location, the highest among major U.S. fast-food chains.Corporate culture
was a devout Southern Baptist; his religious beliefs had a major impact on the company. The company's official statement of corporate purpose says that the business exists "To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us. To have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A." Cathy opposed the company becoming public for religious and personal reasons.A company spokesperson said in 2012, "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."
Sunday closing
In accordance with the founder's belief in the Christian doctrine of first-day Sabbatarianism, all Chick-fil-A locations are closed on Sundays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Cathy said "Our decision to close on Sunday was our way of honoring God and of directing our attention to things that mattered more than our business."In an interview with ABC News's Nightline, Truett's son Dan T. Cathy told reporter Vicki Mabrey that the company is also closed on Sundays because "by the time Sunday came, he was just worn out. And Sunday was not a big trading day, anyway, at the time. So he was closed that first Sunday and we've been closed ever since. He figured if he didn't like working on Sundays, that other people didn't either."
Even Chick-fil-A locations at sports stadiums close on Sundays, although many games are played on Sundays.
Drive-through traffic
The popularity of Chick-fil-A's drive-throughs in the United States has led to traffic problems, police interventions, and complaints by neighboring businesses in more than 20 states. The long drive-through lines have been reported to cause traffic backups, blocking emergency vehicles and city buses, and increasing the risk of collisions and pedestrian injuries.In 2025, the company reported that up to 60% of its sales are from drive-through traffic.