Integrity, commitment to God helped grow Chick-fil-A, executive tells Hoover chamber

Most people know that Chick-fil-A restaurants are closed on Sundays, but many don’t know the story behind it and the reason why, a corporate executive told the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce today.

When Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy opened his first restaurant, The Dwarf Grill in Hapeville, Georgia, in 1946, he was tired after the first week and gave his employees an off day on Sunday to rest and go to church if they chose and spend time with family.

That practice remains in place 71 years later and is one of the company’s guiding principles, Dee Ann Turner, the company’s vice president for enterprise and social responsibility, told the chamber at its monthly luncheon at the Hoover Country Club.

That wasn’t such a big deal in 1946, when most businesses were closed on Sundays, but as times began to change and many restaurants and other businesses began to open on Sundays, it became more of a sacrifice, Turner said.

Cathy opened his first Chick-fil-A restaurant in an Atlanta shopping mall in 1967 and expanded to other malls across the country in the 1970s. Some mall operators wouldn’t let him open a restaurant if he was going to be closed on Sundays, but Cathy stuck to his core values and let those opportunities pass, Turner said.

Mall landlords that did let him come (and close on Sundays) found that the Chick-fil-A restaurants in their malls did more business in six days than the other restaurants did in seven days, Turner said. In some cases, the Chick-fil-A restaurants did more business in six days than all of the other restaurants in the mall combined in seven days, she said.

Cathy’s integrity, when combined with other core values of excellence, loyalty and generosity, paid off handsomely, Turner said.

Chick-fil-A has grown to be the largest quick-serve chicken restaurant chain in the United States based on annual systemwide sales, according to the company’s website. The company reports more than 2,100 restaurants in 46 states and the District of Columbia with annual sales of more than $8 billion.

Since the company’s founding, it has had only one year with a slump in sales, and that was 1982 when a national recession hit, Turner said. Most years since 1982 have seen double-digit growth, she said.

Key to that growth has been understanding and being true to the company’s stated purpose of glorifying God by being a faithful steward of all with which God has entrusted the company and being a positive influence on all who come in contact with the company, Turner said.

The corporation and its independent operators strive to be remarkable, Turner said. “We want people to remark about great service, to remark about great food and great interactions with people,” she said.

That’s why Chick-fil-A workers usually respond with a heartfelt “my pleasure” after being thanked for service and why the company seeks to make going the extra mile to serve customers a natural reaction, Turner said.

That may mean carrying food to the customer’s table, refreshing beverages at the table, carrying umbrellas for customers when it’s raining, or diving in garbage bins to find lost dental appliances, she said.

Mark Meadows, the owner of the Inverness branch of Chick-fil-A, is a perfect example of going the extra mile, Turner said.

During the “snowpocalypse” ice and snow storm of January 2014, Meadows was on his way to deliver about 60 boxed meals when traffic came to a stop due to the ice on the roads, she said. Meadows, knowing he could not deliver the boxed meals, instead gave out the meals at no charge to people stranded on the highway, she said. The next morning, he and his restaurant employees gave out 1,000 or so free chicken biscuits to people who were still stranded, she said.

Hoover Chamber President Jerome Morgan was interrupted with applause when, while introducing Turner, said “there’s something to be said in business for standing on God’s principles.”