Chick-fil-A

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 17th of December 2017, Chick-fil-A broke a tradition and opened its doors on a Sunday. A power outage had left passengers stranded at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, and the restaurant chain prepared meals for them.

  Chick-fil-A is an American fast food company headquartered in College Park, Georgia, and it is the largest chain specializing in chicken sandwiches. Its name plays on the American pronunciation of the word filet. Its signature item is a piece of deep-fried, breaded, boneless chicken breast on a toasted bun with two slices of dill pickle.

  That Sunday opening was news precisely because it was so rare. This documentary asks how a single diner outside Atlanta turned into a chain across 48 states. It asks why a company would give up a full day of sales on purpose. And it asks what happens when a founder's deeply held faith meets a national audience that does not all share it.

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• 2. From Dwarf Grill To Mall

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  In 1946, S. Truett Cathy opened a restaurant called the Dwarf Grill in Hapeville, an Atlanta suburb. It stood near the Ford Motor Company Atlanta Assembly Plant, and the factory supplied many of its customers for years. The original building has an extra small front door beside the full-size entrances, and it reopened after a remodel in 2022.

  In 1961, after fifteen years in the fast-food business, Cathy found a pressure fryer that could cook a chicken sandwich in the time it took to cook a hamburger. He then registered the name Chick-fil-A, Inc. The company later trademarked a slogan that says it did not invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich. Its precise wording is "We Didn't Invent the Chicken, Just the Chicken Sandwich." Cathy's own claim to have invented the chicken sandwich has been shown to be false. Even so, Chick-fil-A was the first national chain to make a fast, fried chicken sandwich its flagship item.

  From 1964 to 1967, the sandwich was licensed to more than fifty eateries, including Waffle House and the concession stands of the new Houston Astrodome. Those licenses ended when the first dedicated Chick-fil-A opened in 1967 in the food court of the Greenbriar Mall in Atlanta. The company closed that original mall location in May 2023 and gave no reason.

  The 1970s and early 1980s brought more food-court shops in suburban malls. On the 16th of April 1986, the first freestanding restaurant opened on North Druid Hills Road in Atlanta, and the company began to favor stand-alone units. Most new restaurants still open in the suburbs of the Southern United States.

  The Cathy family built a small circle of sit-down restaurants beside the chain. Dwarf House restaurants began opening in 1986 with table service, walk-up counters, and drive-thru windows. The first Truett's Grill opened in Morrow, Georgia, in 1996 as a diner-themed spot with an expanded menu. After a trip to Hawaii, Truett Cathy opened Truett's Luau in Fayetteville, Georgia, in 2013, when he was 92 years old.

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• 3. Closed On Sundays

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  Truett Cathy, who lived from 1921 to 2014, was a devout Southern Baptist, and his faith set the company's calendar. Every Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays, on Thanksgiving, and on Christmas Day. Even the locations inside sports stadiums stay shut on Sundays, although many games are played then.

  Cathy explained the rule in spiritual terms. He 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."

  His son Dan T. Cathy gave a more down-to-earth account to reporter Vicki Mabrey on ABC News's Nightline. By the first Sunday, he said, his father was "just worn out," and Sunday was "not a big trading day, anyway, at the time." Truett closed that day and the company has stayed closed ever since. He figured that if he disliked working Sundays, other people did too.

  The company's official statement of corporate purpose carries the same outlook. It says 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." For religious and personal reasons, Cathy also opposed taking the company public.

  Faith showed up on the menu as well. During the Christian season of Lent, the chain once promoted fish sandwiches in keeping with the tradition of abstaining from meat. It no longer offers that product.

  The Sunday rule has bent only a few times. On the 13th of January 2019, a franchise in Mobile, Alabama, opened on a Sunday to honor the birthday wish of a 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy and autism.

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• 4. Small Menu, Big Sales

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  In 2022, Chick-fil-A grossed an average of $6.71 million per restaurant while opening only six days a week. That was the highest figure among fast-food chains in the United States. Raising Cane's came second at $5.44 million per restaurant.

  The chain's strategy rests on a small menu and attentive customer service. The capital A in its name is meant to signal "grade A top quality" chicken. Chick-fil-A builds and owns its restaurants, and a franchisee needs only a $10,000 initial investment. Selection and training of franchisees can take months. The Cathy family has run the company since 1946. Andrew T. Cathy became chief executive in 2021, taking over from Dan Cathy.

  In 2019, the company reported $11.3 billion in United States sales, behind only McDonald's at $40.4 billion. By 2024, systemwide sales reached $22 billion across 3,109 locations. McDonald's reported $53.5 billion and Starbucks $30.4 billion, and McDonald's had 13,559 locations in the United States. Chick-fil-A's average of $7.5 million per location was the highest among major American fast-food chains. In 2018, the most-ordered item was the waffle fries, followed by soft drinks, chicken nuggets, and the original chicken sandwich.

  That success drew competition. Popeyes introduced a fried chicken sandwich in 2019, and other chains followed in a marketing trend called the chicken sandwich wars.

  The drive-through tells another side of the story. In 2025, the company reported that up to 60% of its sales come through the drive-through. The long lines have caused traffic backups, police interventions, and complaints from neighboring businesses in more than 20 states. Reports describe lines blocking emergency vehicles and city buses, and raising the risk of collisions and pedestrian injuries.

  The company has also moved into grocery shelves. In the spring of 2020, it trialed two dipping sauces at some Florida supermarkets, with all profits going to a scholarship fund for store-level employees. The trial worked, and sales spread nationwide by 2021. Two more sauces joined in 2023. Salad dressings tested in Cincinnati and parts of Tennessee in October 2022 and went nationwide in spring 2023.

  In January 2025, Chick-fil-A announced that lemonade would be made at a single automated plant in Santa Clarita, California, instead of in restaurants. The plant can process between 30 and 35 truckloads of lemons a day, with each truckload holding 50,000 pounds.

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• 5. Promises On The Plate

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  In 2011, food blogger and activist Vani Hari pointed out that a Chick-fil-A sandwich contained nearly 100 ingredients. One was peanut oil preserved with tert-butylhydroquinone, called TBHQ, which is made from butane. The company had by then already taken one step on its own. In 2008, it was among the first fast-food chains to become completely free of trans fats.

  In October 2012, the company invited Hari to meet executives at its headquarters. In December 2013, it said it was removing high-fructose corn syrup and artificial dyes, and it was testing a new peanut oil.

  In February 2014, Chick-fil-A became the first fast-food restaurant to promise chicken raised without antibiotics in all its restaurants within five years. The company met that goal by May 2019. In March 2024, it announced it would depart from the commitment, moving from a policy of No Antibiotics Ever to No Antibiotics Important To Human Medicine starting in the spring of 2024. It said the change would "maintain supply of the high-quality chicken."

  In 2016, the chain pledged to use only cage-free eggs by 2026. In 2025, it backtracked, citing barriers such as industry dynamics and bird flu.

  One menu change went the other way. On the 13th of February 2023, Chick-fil-A began offering its first non-meat sandwich, made with breaded cauliflower.

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• 6. Cows, Kale, And Bowls

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  In 1995, the agency The Richards Group created the slogan "Eat Mor Chikin." It is usually shown on signs worn or held by Holstein cows, written in capital letters. The cows replaced the chain's old mascot, Doodles, an anthropomorphized chicken who still appears as the C in the logo.

  On the 1st of January 2004, the campaign was halted during a mad cow disease scare. The company did not want to seem insensitive or appear to be using the scare to raise sales. Two months later, the cows came back.

  The company guards its slogan fiercely. It has successfully challenged at least 30 uses of an "eat more" phrase, arguing that they could confuse the public and dilute its trademarks.

  A 2011 letter to Bo Muller-Moore, a Vermont artist who screen prints T-shirts reading "Eat More Kale," demanded that he stop printing them and hand over his website. Vermont governor Peter Shumlin criticized what he called Chick-fil-A's "corporate bullying." Pro-bono law students from the University of New Hampshire legal clinic helped Muller-Moore. On the 11th of December 2014, he announced that the United States Patent Office had granted his trademark. A formal announcement followed on the 12th of December 2014 on the Statehouse steps.

  In 2016, after 22 years with The Richards Group, the chain switched to McCann New York. Its ads kept the cows and added famous figures from history in a campaign called "Chicken for Breakfast. It's not as crazy as you think."

  The company also puts its name on college football. Since 1997, it has sponsored the Peach Bowl, played in Atlanta on New Year's Eve, which took the name Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in 2014. It also sponsors the Southeastern Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Kickoff Game moved from the Georgia Dome to Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2017. On the 12th of July 2023, the Georgia-based insurer Aflac became that game's new sponsor.

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• 7. Marriage Controversy

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  Through its WinShape Foundation, Chick-fil-A has donated over $5 million to groups that oppose same-sex marriage. Students at several colleges and universities responded by working to ban or remove its restaurants from their campuses.

  In June and July 2012, chief operating officer Dan T. Cathy made public statements saying that those who "have the audacity to define what marriage is about" were "inviting God's judgment on our nation." Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Chicago Alderman Proco "Joe" Moreno said they hoped to block expansion into their areas. Liberal pundits, legal experts, and the American Civil Liberties Union criticized those proposed bans.

  The Jim Henson Company ended its Pajanimals kids' meal toy arrangement and donated the payment to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Chick-fil-A stopped distributing the toys, saying unrelated safety concerns had arisen earlier. A spokesperson said in 2012 that the company treats "every person with honor, dignity, and respect" regardless of belief, race, creed, sexual orientation, or gender. On the 31st of July 2012, the company said its intent was "to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena."

  Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee launched a Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day to counter a boycott by same-sex marriage activists. Many stores reported record numbers of customers that day. The Federal Aviation Administration also responded to two cities that were keeping the chain out of their airports. It cited federal rules against excluding people from airport activities on the basis of religious creed.

  In April 2018, the company reportedly kept donating to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which opposes gay marriage. In a November 2019 interview, company president Tim Tassopoulos said it would stop donating to the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

  In 2020, the company appointed its first head of diversity. It turned its giving toward education and hunger alleviation, a shift that opened the door to its next overseas push.

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• 8. Crossing Borders

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  In August 1996, Chick-fil-A opened a restaurant in Durban, South Africa, its first outside North America. A second followed in Johannesburg in November 1997. Neither was profitable, and both closed in 2001.

  Canada came first on the calendar, in 1981, with locations at Oakville Place and Burlington Centre in Ontario. The company says little about when they closed. A September 1994 return at the University of Alberta in Edmonton lasted only two or three years. On the 6th of September 2019, the chain opened in Toronto near Yonge and Bloor Streets, and protesters criticized its animal-rights record and what they called its history of supporting anti-LGBTQ causes. It then spread to Kitchener and Windsor in 2021 and to Alberta in 2024.

  The United Kingdom proved harder. A pilot in Aviemore, Scotland, opened in February 2019 and closed in January 2020 amid protests. Chick-fil-A said it had always planned a short stay. On the 10th of October 2019, a store opened at The Oracle shopping centre in Reading. The mall declined to extend the lease after its six-month pilot, and the store closed in March 2020 amid continuing protests.

  In September 2023, the company announced plans for five British restaurants and more than $100 million of investment over ten years. It promised a $25,000 donation to a local organization at each opening. Its first full restaurant opened in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in January 2025, followed by Templepatrick in February and Leeds in October.

  In 2022, Chick-fil-A opened its first restaurant in Puerto Rico and had seven there by 2024, with up to 25 planned by 2030. Its menu there includes coffee grown and roasted entirely on the island.

  In March 2023, CEO Andrew Cathy said the company wanted to expand to Asia and Europe by 2026 and into five overseas markets by 2030. The Wall Street Journal reported that it sought countries with "stable economies, dense populations, and a demand for chicken." A three-day pop-up at Esplanade Mall in Singapore ran from the 26th to the 28th of June 2024. The company then pledged $75 million over ten years to its first Singapore restaurant, which opened on the 11th of December 2025.

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