Fast Food with a Difference

I did begin to hear a lot about another fast-food chain as I searched for the best in service. My fiancée, Debra, was regularly picking up trays of chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-A. She kept suggesting that I look into this chain since it was different. I didn’t know what she meant by “different,” but I thought I would take a look.

I can’t explain why I hadn’t been to a Chick-fil-A before I began this book, but I know now what I have missed. If you have been to a Chick-fil-A, you know what I am talking about. If you haven’t, go there and you’ll see for yourself. Let me tell you in advance that it’s a lot more than the food.

When you go to a Chick-fil-A, you are going to find a clear difference between the people who work there and those at virtually any other fast-food restaurant. I wanted to find out what caused this difference, and I did.

Chick-fil-A is a privately held, Georgia-based company. It is not quite a household name, but there are over 1,000 stores across the country. Basically, all they sell is a chicken sandwich, but they do it to the tune of over a billion dollars a year in revenue. Once I began to ask around about customer service, however, this company kept coming up more than any other, more than the household names such as McDonald’s, KFC, and Burger King.

Significantly, the two most common comments that were repeated to me about Chick-fil-A were “They really take care of their customers” and “You realize that they close every Sunday, don’t you?” I wanted to find out more, and then I learned the Truett Cathy story.