Chick-fil-A is one of the largest American fast food restaurant chains and the largest whose specialty is chicken sandwiches. Its headquarters is in College Park, Georgia. Chick-fil-A was originally founded as the Dwarf Grill in 1946, changing the name to ‘Dwarf House’ until rebranding as Chick-fil-A in 1967. The company operates more than 2,605 restaurants, primarily in the United States with locations in 48 states. The restaurant serves breakfast before transitioning to its lunch and dinner menu. Chick-fil-A also offers customers catered selections from its menu for special events.
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Founded: 1946 · Hapeville, GA
Headquarters: Atlanta, GA
CEO: Dan T. Cathy
Founder: S. Truett Cathy
Chick-fil-A (/tʃɪkfɪˈleɪ/ chik-fil-AY, a play on the American English pronunciation of fillet) is one of the largest American fast food restaurant chains and the largest whose specialty is chicken sandwiches. Its headquarters is in College Park, Georgia. Chick-fil-A was originally founded as the Dwarf Grill in 1946, changing the name to ‘Dwarf House’ until rebranding as Chick-fil-A in 1967. The company operates more than 2,605 restaurants, primarily in the United States with locations in 48 states. The restaurant serves breakfast before transitioning to its lunch and dinner menu. Chick-fil-A also offers customers catered selections from its menu for special events.
Many of the company’s values are influenced by the religious beliefs of its late founder, S. Truett Cathy, a devout Southern Baptist. All Chick-fil-A restaurants are closed for business on Sundays, as well as on Thanksgiving and Christmas. The company’s varying stance often in opposition to same-sex marriage has been the subject of public controversy, though the company has begun loosening its stance on this issue.
History:
The chain’s origin can be traced to the Dwarf Grill (now the Dwarf House), a restaurant opened by S. Truett Cathy, the chain’s former chairman and CEO, in 1946. The restaurant is located in Hapeville, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta,[11] and is near the location of the now-demolished Ford Motor Company Atlanta Assembly Plant, for many years a source of many of the restaurant’s patrons.
In 1961, after 15 years in the fast food business, Cathy found a pressure-fryer that could cook the chicken sandwich in the same amount of time it took to cook a fast-food hamburger.[12] 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.
The first Chick-fil-A opened in 1967, in the food court of the Greenbriar Mall, in a suburb of Atlanta.
Since 1997, the Atlanta-based company has been the title sponsor of the Peach Bowl, an annual college football bowl game played in Atlanta on New Year’s Eve. Chick-fil-A also is a key sponsor of the SEC and the ACC of college athletics.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, the chain expanded by opening new locations in suburban malls’ food courts.[15] The first freestanding location was opened April 16, 1986, on North Druid Hills Road in Atlanta, Georgia,[16] and the company began to focus more on this stand-alone type unit rather than on the food court type. Although it has expanded outward from its original geographic base, most new restaurants are located in Southern suburban areas.
Before the “Eat mor Chikin” cows, who debuted in 1995, the chicken that is still featured in the chain’s logo was Chick-Fil-A’s mascot. The name of the mascot is Doodles.
In 2008, Chick-fil-A became the first fast-food restaurant to become completely trans-fat free.
In October 2015, the company opened a three-story 5,000 square feet (460 m2) restaurant in Manhattan that became the largest free-standing Chick-fil-A in the country at that time.
On December 17, 2017, Chick-fil-A broke their tradition and opened on a Sunday to prepare meals for passengers left stranded during the power outage at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, and 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.