Chick-fil-A Values Triggering Backlash Are Also Success Recipe

By Drake Bennett
Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) -- In the popular imagination, the
American fast-food chain founder is an amalgam of
entrepreneurial archetypes. He is at once a garage tinkerer and
a tastemaker, a showman and a flesh-presser. He starts out in a
paper hat behind a lunch counter and rises to become the smiling
grandfatherly face on a thousand billboards and a million
management handbooks.
No member of the fast-food pantheon actually matches up
with this mythic figure, of course. Ray Kroc, McDonald’s Corp.’s
founder, was a salesman by trade, not a cook, and a charismatic
autocrat whose mania for detail verged on the pathological.
Harland Sanders spent his later years embittered by what
Kentucky Fried Chicken had become -- a franchisee ended up suing
him for libel when the Colonel called the chain’s gravy “pure
wallpaper paste.”
The founding father who comes closest to the ideal is S.
Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A, Bloomberg Businessweek
reports in its Aug. 6 issue. He opened his first restaurant in
1946 in the Atlanta suburb of Hapeville, catering to workers
from a Ford Motor Co. plant and Delta Air Lines Inc. offices
nearby. The place was tiny, with a counter and four tables. He
called it the Dwarf Grill. For entertainment, he would dress his
school-age sons Dan and Bubba (Donald) in dwarf costumes and
have them sing for the customers.

Fried Chicken

Cathy would probably have spent his life as a moderately
successful local restaurateur save for two innovations, one
culinary and one cultural. In the early 1960s the owners of a
local poultry purveyor came to him with a bunch of boneless
breast pieces they couldn’t do anything with and he began
experimenting with ways of making a fried chicken sandwich.
Cathy had grown up on his mother’s chicken, fried in a
skillet with the lid on to keep it moist. The difficulty for a
restaurant like his, with customers grabbing a quick bite
between shifts, was that fried chicken took too long to make.
The young restaurateur set out to replicate his mother’s
version and found a recently invented commercial pressure cooker
called the Henny Penny that allowed him to fry a boneless,
skinless chicken breast in a mere four minutes. After tinkering
with his seasoning mix, Cathy put the result on a buttered bun,
added two pickle slices and, at the suggestion of his lawyer,
came up with a trademarkable name: the Chick-fil-A, the final
“A” a measure, he said, of the sandwich’s quality.

Mall Expansion

Cathy’s second epiphany was that malls needed fast-food
restaurants. Before he opened the first Chick-fil-A restaurant
in 1967 in Atlanta’s Greenbriar Mall, there was no such thing as
a food court -- suburban malls were a relatively new phenomenon,
and people went there to shop, not eat.
It turned out that shoppers liked fueling their forays with
fried chicken sandwiches, and as the mall and the food court
caught on around the South, so did Chick-fil-A. Cathy was a
cautious franchiser, but the chain nonetheless spread quickly.
In the mid-1980s, the chain started opening stand-alone
restaurants. Today it has 1,000, plus hundreds in food courts at
malls, airports, and college campuses. Total sales last year
reached $4.1 billion.
In the competitive ecosystem of fast-food chicken, each
chain has its own identity. Yum! Brands Inc.’s KFC is the
biggest; Church’s Chicken is more urban “and is probably the
one, without saying so, that targets the African-American
community the most,” says Bret Thorn, a columnist for Nation’s
Restaurant News. Popeyes is Cajun. Chick-fil-A is “all about
having really good service,” says Thorn, “all about the
chicken sandwich, and having strong Christian principles.”
Those principles are at the center of the controversy
that’s now engulfing Truett Cathy’s chicken chain. The dilemma
for Chick-fil-A is that those principles are also at the center
of its success.

God’s Judgment

The members of the Cathy family have never made a secret of
their religious faith. What they haven’t talked about as much is
the political implications of that faith. That changed on June
16, when Dan Cathy, having grown up from dwarf performer to
Chick-fil-A’s president, went on a syndicated radio show and
said, “we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we
shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to
what constitutes a marriage.’ ”
Two weeks later an interview with Cathy was published in a
North Carolina Baptist newsweekly called the Biblical Recorder.
In it, he said his company was “very much supportive of the
family -- the biblical definition of the family unit.”
For the younger Cathy, just as for the majority of the
delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention, the biblical
definition of the family unit meant one thing: a man, a woman,
and their children. When Southern Baptist publications use the
words “same-sex marriage” and “gay marriage,” they bracket
them in quotes.

Gay-Rights Groups

Gay-rights groups, which for years have pointed out that
Chick-fil-A’s charitable arm gives millions of dollars to Focus
on the Family, the Eagle Forum, the Family Research Council, and
other organizations that agitate against gay marriage, pounced
on Cathy’s comments.
The quotes spread through blogs and the websites of
watchdog groups, and the political haymaking commenced. On July
20, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino sent a letter to Chick-fil-A
urging the company to back out of plans to locate in the city
and told the Boston Herald that he would make it “very
difficult” for the restaurant to come to town. (He later said
he had no power to do so.)
A few days later a Chicago alderman announced that he would
block a planned Chick-fil-A location in his ward, and Mayor Rahm
Emanuel said that “Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago’s
values.”

‘Hate Chicken’

On Twitter, San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee said that Chick-
fil-A wasn’t welcome in San Francisco, even though the
restaurant hadn’t announced any plans to open a location there,
and Washington Mayor Vincent Gray called the chain “hate
chicken.” New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a
favorite to be the city’s next mayor, wrote a letter on July 28
to New York University president John Sexton, whose campus hosts
the only Chick-fil-A in the city, asking him to boot out the
restaurant.
Against this array of urban Northern and coastal liberals,
a red-state chorus arose to defend the honor of Chick-fil-A. Its
partisans pointed out, among other things, that the chain was
being attacked even though there’s no evidence it discriminates
against gay customers or job applicants.

‘Vitriolic Attacks’

Rick Santorum, who was a contender for the Republican
presidential nomination this year, and Sarah Palin, the defeated
vice-presidential candidate in 2008, voiced their support for
the chain, as did evangelists Billy and Franklin Graham.
Former Arkansas Governor and talk-show host Mike Huckabee
took to Facebook Inc. to declare himself “incensed at the
vitriolic attacks” on the restaurant. He declared Aug. 1 to be
Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day; more than 600,000 people pledged
on Facebook to attend, and on the appointed day TV news channels
showed lines outside certain franchises.
As the calls for demonstrations and counterdemonstrations
proliferated, the company declined all press requests for
comment. It issued a statement that the company’s policy is to
“treat every person with honor, dignity, and respect --
regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation, or
gender,” and pledged to “leave the policy debate over same-sex
marriage to the government and political arena.”

Games, Prayers

While the company didn’t go looking for a controversy, it’s
no coincidence that one erupted now, as the distinctly Southern
institution looks to expand beyond the region where it grew up.
Although Chick-fil-A’s more than 1,615 locations make it the
second-largest chicken chain in the U.S., numbers don’t do
justice to the devotion it inspires.
The day before a new franchise opens, its parking lot fills
with fans camping out, a mix of slumber party and revival
meeting. Some drive hundreds of miles for a shot at the coupons
the restaurant hands out on the first morning for a year’s worth
of weekly free meals. There are games, prayers, music -- and
speeches about Chick-fil-A’s history and philosophy. Dan Cathy
often shows up to lead the festivities.
Other chains have religious management: Domino’s Pizza
Inc.’s founder, Tom Monaghan, has given millions to Catholic
charities and founded a conservative Catholic university.
California’s In-N-Out Burger prints Bible verses on its
packaging. But the Southern Baptist faith infuses Chick-fil-A in
a way that’s unique. The company is still owned by the Cathy
family, and run, they say, on “biblical principles.”
The company mission: “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.” As
Truett Cathy has emphasized, that covers everything from
offering friendly service to taking on minimal debt.

Courting Evangelicals

It also means explicitly courting evangelicals as
customers. Some Chick-fil-A locations host what is known as
Church Bulletin Night: Anyone who brings in a church bulletin on
Monday from the previous Sunday morning’s service gets a free
chicken sandwich.
“They do have very tightly knit relations often with local
evangelical churches,” says Darren Grem, a historian at the
University of Mississippi who has studied the role religion
plays in Chick-fil-A’s popularity. “Evangelical churches will
load the kids up in the van, take them down to Chick-fil-A on a
Saturday night after a soccer match or a retreat or a revival,”
he says. “It’s the first stop for a lot of evangelical churches
for their own catering.”
Chick-fil-A isn’t a monolith, and there’s no requirement
that individual franchisees share the Cathy family’s Southern
Baptist faith. Still, certain rules are nonnegotiable. For
example, all Chick-fil-A restaurants are closed on Sundays.

Closed on Sundays

The chain gives up millions of dollars by forgoing that
Sabbath business, but the fact that it makes that sacrifice --
something every regular Chick-fil-A customer knows -- inspires
the sort of loyalty that causes people to turn a chicken chain
into a touchstone.
The Cathy family has created a business suited not only to
the palate of the Sunbelt South, but to its culture. Huckabee
described the Cathys in his Facebook post as “a wonderful
Christian family who are committed to operating the company with
Biblical principles and whose story is the true American success
story.” The chain might even have more to lose by opening on
Sundays than it would gain.

Close to Roots

Americans are used to thinking of fast-food chains as
needing to go national, or even global, to thrive. But Chick-
fil-A has done very well, and inspired its distinctive brand of
loyalty, by staying closer to its roots.
Up to now the geography of the chain has reflected that,
with locations concentrated in the South and Southwest and none
at all in several Northern and New England states. When it has
ventured North, the chain has mostly stuck to the suburbs,
generally more conservative territory than the downtowns.
In recent years, however, the chain’s ambitions have
changed. Dan Cathy has talked about opening more restaurants in
Chicago, expanding in New York, moving into Tokyo and London.
To succeed in those markets, Chick-fil-A will need to find
a way to keep the aspects of its biblical principles that appeal
more broadly -- the constant graciousness, the sense of
community -- and play down those that could be construed as
intolerant.

Back to Food

“I suspect they’re working very hard at Chick-fil-A now,
asking how do they get this to settle down, how to get back to
focusing on wonderful food and wonderful service,” says Timothy
Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern’s Kellogg
School of Management. “There’s a risk that the brand could come
to stand for a certain point of view on an issue, which in the
long run could make it really hard for the chain to grow.”
There’s another approach, though. Rather than compromise,
Chick-fil-A could double down on the customers who have already
proven their loyalty by rushing to the chicken chain’s defense.
No brand, after all, can be all things to all people,
especially at a time when even the most innocent consumer
choices have become politicized. Anheuser-Busch InBev NV doesn’t
worry about offending refined sensibilities when it markets Bud
Light beer to young male binge drinkers. Rob Schwartz of the ad
firm TBWA/Chiat/Day points to Ikea as a sort of anti-Chick-fil-A
-- the Swedish home products giant cemented its bond with young
urban consumers in the 1990s by running controversial TV ads
featuring same-sex couples.

Focused Brand

“The more focused and defined a brand is on what they want
to stand for and who they want to appeal to, the stronger the
brand,” says Allen Adamson, managing director of the global
branding firm Landor Associates. “Sometimes brands define
themselves by what they’re not -- saying what you’re not is very
hard.” Except for Chick-fil-A. A number of progressive, big-
city mayors are telling it.
It’s an open question whether it makes sense for the
company to expand into a place like Boston. Yet the culture
wars, which make for ugly politics, can make for good business.
“What you’ll find in the future,” says Grem, “is instead
of trying to push up against that [resistance], they’ll probably
be perfectly happy setting up shop in the west Chicago suburbs
where they may have a more receptive audience.”
The Cathy family’s public faith is as much an ingredient of
Chick-fil-A’s success as the dill pickle slices on their chicken
sandwiches. When a recipe works, a fast-food chain is loath to
change it.