But what’s certain is that the scope of his success - his new Chick-fil-A business (proudly named with the capital A to indicate the grade-A quality of the chicken,) his brand, and national acclaim - rested on something simple, satisfying, and potentially universal in its appeal. The extent to which Truett was driven by business smarts, divine inspiration, or both, we may never know. Finally his regular diners, including many shift workers from Delta Air Lines and the Ford Motor Company, as well as new diners from Fulton County Stadium and Waffle House, where Truett expanded his sales, insisted he stop experimenting and stick with the sandwich they’d grown to love. And even though customers loved it, he continued tinkering with his creation. By garnishing the cooked breast with two pickles and sliding it between a toasted, buttered bun, Truett propelled his new sandwich to menu darling status at the Dwarf House Grill. He didn’t know it yet, but Truett had landed on a fast-food lottery ticket. The excess chicken breast became Truett’s canvas, and with a craftsman’s diligence, he tenderized it one way, seasoned it another way, cooked it in different oils, and served it in various configurations before finally landing on the recipe his mother used in her boarding house decades earlier: a well-seasoned chicken breast, pressure cooked in less than five minutes to retain its juicy tenderness. Truett, not one to miss a business opportunity, bought the extra chicken from the Goode brothers and figured if its quality was good enough for Delta’s jet-setting clientele, it would be good enough to please his customers. While the Goode brothers managed to meet the airline’s stringent size requirements, the brothers were left with many extra pounds of quality chicken breast. Back in 1961, even short flights came with a hot lunch, Dan recalls, that needed to be reliable and quick to prepare. Just a few miles from his Dwarf House Grill in Hapeville, Georgia, the 24-hour diner precursor to today’s Chick-fil-A restaurants, a national airline hired Jim and Hall Goode, of Goode Brothers Poultry, to create a lunch item for its square, in-flight serving trays. “We’re not in the chicken business serving people,” Dan’s father often said, “we’re in the people business serving chicken.”īeyond this sense of fast-food destiny, Truett’s chicken sandwich is rooted in hard-knocks pragmatism and some good, old-fashioned luck. The food is how he delivers delight and satisfaction six days a week. As Chick-fil-A’s CEO, he serves his dad’s creation with unyielding purpose. Even for a culinary visionary, chicken was a long bet.īut the Original Chicken Sandwich, for all its countertrend quirkiness, wouldn’t take long to become a mainstay: oddity turned into novelty, which matured into a comfortable familiarity, then, with success, a sense of the sandwich having been there all along.Īt least that’s how Dan thinks of it. When Dan tasted his father’s sandwich, Americans were enamored with beef, not chicken, eating an average 50 pounds of beef per person annually, according to the USDA. It’s true that Truett’s new sandwich was odd, especially considering the nation’s changing appetite. “But Dad had put a whole piece of chicken between that bun. “I’d eaten hamburgers all my life,” Dan recalled in a recent interview at Chick-fil-A’s test kitchen in Atlanta, Georgia. Though he didn’t realize it at the time, his father’s new sandwich would change not only Dan’s life but the trajectory of his family’s business and the fast-food industry as a whole. His son, Dan Cathy, remembers the moment well as a 12-year-old boy. It was 1964 when Truett Cathy came home with his restaurant’s latest menu offering: a piece of fried chicken breast tucked between two buttered buns. This article is the result of that visit, interviews with company founders and Operators and additional reporting on the rich history and distinct culture of Chick-fil-A. Editor’s Note: Chick-fil-A recently invited a team from Atlantic 57, the consulting and creative division of The Atlantic, to spend a few days at our Atlanta headquarters to explore what makes our Chicken Sandwich so special.
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