Chick-fil-A: A Recipe for Success

Benudhar Sahu
Research Associate, IBS Hyderabad (Under IFHE - A Deemed to be University u/s 3 of the UGC Act, 1956), Hyderabad, Telangana, India. E-mail: sahoo@icmrindia.org
Indu Perepu
Research Faculty, IBS Case Research Center, IBS Hyderabad (Under IFHE - A Deemed to be University u/s 3 of the UGC Act, 1956), Hyderabad, Telangana, India. E-mail: indup@icmrindia.org

The case is about Atlanta-based fast food restaurant chain Chick-fil-A's innovative business practices that made it the 3rd largest restaurant chain in the US. Known for its delicious chicken sandwich, Chick-fil-A witnessed consecutive years of growth since its founding in 1967. The success of Chick-fil-A was attributed to its simple ingredients, menu additions, efficient drive-thru performance, and single-owner franchise system, among others. Chick-fil-A took great care of its employees, offering a warm, familiar workplace environment, and this translated into the best customer service in the fast food sector in the US. The company focused on innovating and improving its products, services, and processes in order to better serve customers and communities. Innovation was the central part of Chick-fil-A's business. It continued to innovate through its innovation center that focused on digital technology. All these practices helped Chick-fil-A attract and retain customers, and made it the 'most beloved fast food chain in America'. Despite the challenges the company faced due to its beliefs and the competitive business environment, it maintained a leading position in the industry. However, with competitors fast catching up, it remained to be seen whether the fast food giant would be able to hold on to its position.

Description

In 2019, Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta-based fast food restaurant chain known for its delicious chicken sandwich, was recognized as the top intimate fast food brand ahead of American fast food giants Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks Corporation (see Exhibit I for the Top 10 US Most Intimate Fast Food Brands in 2019). Chick-fil-A was successful in building a strong profile among a broad range of consumers including women, men, millennials, and people from various income groups. In addition to its reputation as a people-centric organization, the company's consistent growth, stellar customer service, quality food, and use of new technologies were said to be the key reasons for the company maintaining the leading position among the fast food restaurant chains year after year.

Chick-fil-A, founded as the Dwarf Grill in 1946, was one of the largest American fast food restaurant chains, whose speciality was chicken sandwiches. The restaurant chain had long been known for its innovative and out-of-the-box thinking. The company focused on continuing to innovate and improve its products, processes, and services to better serve customers and communities alike. Innovations like a mobile app, new store layouts, easy kitchen operations, new menu items, bicycle drive thru restaurants, and speedy drive thru lines were highly popular with the customers.

Chick-fil-A built a culture that supported innovation and believed that employees should be able to establish a connection between what they did and why it mattered. For this, the company took great care of its employees while offering them a warm, familiar workplace environment. Its innovative practices helped Chick-fil-A provide high quality food combined with exceptional service. Customers consistently rated Chick-fil-A high on cleanliness, quick service, and fresh food. Its ultimate aim was to provide the consumers with a great experience. As Dan Cathy, president and CEO of Chick-fil-A, said, "Give them same service of a $30 restaurant at the $6 restaurant."1

However, the company was not without its own challenges. Rivals in fast food chains such as Popeyes and Church's Chicken, were fast catching up with Chick-fil-A with their own version of the chicken sandwich. With McDonald's entry into the chicken sandwich market, the competition was only growing stiffer. Industry experts said that Chick-fil-A could maintain its position provided it increased its base of intimate users. It remained to be seen how the fast food chain would maintain its leading position in the industry.

About 'Chick-fil-A'

Atlanta-based family-owned and privately-held restaurant company Chick-fil-A was founded by S Truett Cathy (Cathy). Cathy established the business in 1946, when he and his younger brother, Ben, opened a tiny diner called the Dwarf Grill (later renamed the Dwarf House) in South Atlanta. The Dwarf House was located very close to the American multinational automaker Ford Motor Company's Atlanta assembly plant2, where many of the restaurant's early customers worked. The Dwarf House's menu focused on hamburgers and steaks. It was here that Cathy tested variations of his chicken sandwiches, serving them to customers and taking feedback, until he finally developed the perfect mix of spices-more than 20 in all.3 Cathy eventually settled on a recipe of perfectly seasoned chicken breast, but he was looking for the best way to serve it. He finally decided to put the small piece of meat between two buttered buns and serve it as a sandwich along with two-dill pickle slices. Cathy knew he had developed the perfect chicken sandwich, and it was from this that the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich was born.

Working with the words "chicken" and "fillet," Cathy dubbed his new creation "Chick-fil-A,"-the letter "A" conveying the concept of being the first or the best. While Chick-fil-A evolved from the name of the sandwich to the name of the chain, its logo too evolved over the years into the famous beak, eye, and crest feathers logo.4 Chick-fil-A sold its products to other restaurants during the mid-1960s, but when Cathy realized that a large chain would take his idea and make it their own with a little change, he decided to move from selling licensed products and concentrate on operating his own restaurants. In 1963, Cathy registered the name of the company and the next year he incorporated the company. After years of fine-tuning his recipe, Cathy opened the first Chick-fil-A restaurant in 1967 in Atlanta's Greenbriar shopping center, the first indoor mall in the Southeast. He was the first to serve food in malls despite the long prevailing belief that shoppers would complain about the smell of cooking.

With its distinctive product, Chick-fil-A grew rapidly in the 1970s alongside the shopping malls in which the restaurants were located. By the mid-1980s, the company had expanded beyond the malls and had started operating drive-through restaurants in busy communities. But in 1982, the company fell victim to its own success. Impressed by Chick-fil-A, other restaurant chains began marketing their own chicken fillet sandwiches. To counter the competition, Chick-fil-A published coupons in newspapers, promising a discount at its stores, throughout the country. However, the huge response rate led to heavy losses. In addition, delays in constructing restaurants and inflation aggravated the problems for the company. In addition to Chick-fil-A's dine-in arrangements, the company launched the Dwarf House line of sit-down establishments in 1985.These offered customers a choice of sit-down family dining or carryout. In 1986, the company opened its first standalone restaurant on North Druid Hills Road in Atlanta. However, at every restaurant, the company's main product was its chicken fillet sandwich.

By 2016, Chick-fil-A was generating about $4.4 mn in sales per restaurant annually, compared to American restaurants Whataburger and Panera Bread's $2.7 mn each and Jason's Deli's $2.6 mn annual sales per restaurant (see Exhibit II for American Quick Service Restaurants). According to a 2016 annual drive-thru report by the business publication QSR magazine, Chick-fil-A was the most polite chain restaurant with employees at the chain being voted as the ones who were most likely to say "please" and "thank you" to customers.5 In 2017, Chick-fil-A reported more than $9 bn in revenue. The year also marked 50 years of positive growth6 for the chain and saw it

being named one of the top 100 best places to work by Glassdoor7, 8 In 2018, Chick-fil-A reported more than $10 bn in revenue, marking 51 consecutive years of sales growth.9 The same year, the average Chick-fil-A location brought in $4.6 mn in annual sales, up from $4.2 mn in 2017-more than any other fast food chain in the country.10

Known for its original chicken sandwiches, Chick-fil-A had also a substantial amount of fruits and vegetable options and even publicized these menu items to vegetarians. It served freshly prepared food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The family-owned business expanded well beyond its roots in Atlanta and by October 2019, was operating more than 2,400 restaurants, primarily in the US, with locations in 47 states and Washington, DC, and Canada.11

Growth Factors

Chick-fil-A's business was directly linked to its unique business model. Cathy was the first to franchise Chick-fil-A's branding and business operations although most of the franchisees were limited to owning only one restaurant to ensure quality was preserved.12 To become a Chick-fil-A franchise, the franchisees were required to invest $10,000-far less than fast food rivals expected (see Exhibit III for the Average Cost of Starting up a Fast Food Franchise). The chain also supported the operators by paying all start-up costs including those relating to real estate, construction, and restaurant equipment. Though opening a Chick-fil-A franchise was cheap, it was highly competitive, and a lengthy process. Chick-fil-A looked for five things in a new operator-character, chemistry, and competence ("the 3 C's), along with the entrepreneurial spirit and a growth mindset.13 Out of more than 20,000 franchisee applications a year, the chain selected only 75 to 80,14 making it one of the most selective chains in the industry. This kind of selection allowed Chick-fil-A to differentiate between franchisees in terms of quality of character and fit within the organization. The company expected a franchisee to devote his entire time and effort to a particular store at a time. This was essential because only these types of operators could provide and sustain high levels of customer service, a critical piece of Chick-fil-A's business model.

Quality Product

Chick-fi-A's growth was attributed to its freshly prepared food made with the best-quality ingredients. The fast food chain had been following the same recipe-a seasoned, breaded chicken breast and two-dill pickle slices between two halves of a bun-over the

years. It served chicken with 100% whole breast meat, without any fillers, hormones, or additives. "Among the people who know it and love it, Chick-fil-A delivers on the reputation drivers that matter-in linking high-quality products and services, to a high-minded sense of purpose, and a commitment to well-intended acts of good citizenship,"15 said Stephen Hahn-Griffiths, chief reputation officer at Reputation Institute, Inc.16 The company still believed in serving great-tasting food, made with the freshest ingredients and delivered with a warm smile.

To preserve the quality of the product, Chick-fil-A took care of the whole process in the supply chain - from the farms that grew the vegetables, to the kitchens that prepared the meals. It partnered with suppliers and ensured that they followed rigid quality and safety standards, including Global Food Safety Initiative17 (GFSI) and Animal Wellbeing Standards.18 Much of Chick-fil-A's food was sourced from farms across the US that provided jobs to local communities. Chick-fil-A used chicken for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, with waffle-cut fries, and salads. But even in these products, the company maintained quality standards. Fresh salad vegetables were delivered to the stores daily and were chopped in-house. Again with an eye on freshness, lemonade was made from real lemons; the iced tea was made fresh at the stores as were the milkshakes.

Customer Service

Besides food, personalized service and hospitality was the major differentiator for the company. "Chick-fil-A is known for their food, but, quite frankly, we have become better known for our service and our hospitality," former Chick-fil-A CMO Steve Robinson (Robinson) said. "[B]rand is built around gracious engagement and genuine engagement."19 Like many fast food chains, most Chick-fil-A restaurants had a kids' play area and offered free wi-fi. The chain occupied a special place in parents' hearts as it constantly hosted free kids' events like stuffed animal sleepover nights, giveaways, and freebies. "It is really about delivering high-quality personalized service, best-in-class hospitality along with food that tastes great. We care so much about our guests that we believe something as simple as coming in to buy a chicken sandwich can be a bright spot in their day,"20 Khaiilah Cooper (Cooper), Chick-fil-A's director, service and hospitality group, said.

Cathy was so familiar with customers that he knew them by name and formed lifelong friendships with his employees. More than as a source of revenue generation, he viewed his business as a source of inspiration to others.

When Chick-fil-A was started, most of its customers were employees of the nearby Ford plant, as well as the Atlanta airport next to Hapeville. They seemed to be repeat customers. According to Cathy, "Word-of-mouth in the food business is more important than any other source of advertising. It is better to maintain your present customers than to spend a lot of time and expense replacing them with new ones."21 In 1982, Chick-fil-A changed its emphasis from word-of-mouth campaign to advertising. The company started to impress on its operators the three key principles embodied in the abbreviation "QSC"- Quality, Service, and Cleanliness. Within six months of the launch of the new strategy, the company's sales increased by more than 40%.22 The introduction of a new product, chicken nuggets, in 1982 helped the company to compete with the menus of large competitors such as McDonald's.

As a leader in customer service satisfaction, Chick-fil-A earned the Chicken Restaurant Brand of the Year honors for the fourth consecutive year in the 2017 Harris Poll23 EquiTrend Study.24 In the same year, it also received the top score among the fast food brands. It also had among the top 10 scores for overall customer experience in the 2017 Temkin Experience Ratings25 survey.26 In customer service satisfaction, the Harris Poll's annual corporate reputation survey ranked the company 4th out of 100 in 2018.27 The 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings survey recognized the company for its customer service and it was named the "Best Franchise Brand," in 201828 by Airport Revenue News.29

According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index's (ACSI30) 2018-19 Restaurants report, Chick-fil-A topped all other fast food restaurants in customer satisfaction for the fourth consecutive year on the basis of interviews with more than 23,000 customers with the restaurants being scored using a 100-point scale.31 The chain's overall score was 86 out of 100 on a variety of indicators including staff courtesy, food quality, restaurant cleanliness, and mobile app quality, followed by a "group of smaller fast food outlets" which scored 82, Panera Bread (score-81), and a four-way tie between Papa John's, Arby's, Chipotle, and Pizza Hut (all scoring 80) (see Exhibit IV for America's Top Fast Food Restaurants). The chicken chain's massive growth in 2018 was considered responsible for its leading position in the American fast food chain, according to Nation's Restaurant News32 (NRN) analysis published in June 2019. The company's system-wise sales grew 16.7% in 2018, up from $8.97 bn the previous year.33 "When they come in, they are greeted by a well-dressed person who gives them a smile, makes eye contact, does not rush them and is able to bring the meal to the table. This is the great customer experience and the 'secret sauce' honestly is our operators and their local ownership of those restaurants,"34 Cooper said.

People-Focused Business

Cathy had no plans to take the company public. He believed that selling shares to stockholders would change the very core of Chick-fil-A, a family run business with a focus on people. This was due to the founder's Baptist beliefs. Chick-fil-A's mission was "to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us; and to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A."35 Cathy always maintained that he was not in the chicken business; rather he was in the people business.The company emphatically stood by its brand, saying, "We embrace all people, regardless of religion, race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity."36 The fast food chain was devoted to serving the local communities in which its franchised restaurants operated. Chick-fil-A's guiding principle was to support the local community through fundraisers, charitable donations, and getting involved with causes that mattered to the larger interest communities. The chain had a positive influence on the community in which it operated. In 1984, Cathy started a charitable organization that offered academic scholarships to team members and supported youth through various assistance programs such as youth summer camps, foster homes, and transitional homes for youth.

Employee Motivation

Cathy respected his employees and recognized their work in the restaurant. He taught his employees that "Every life has a story, and often our customers and our employees, need a little grace and a little space when you deal with them because they are either experiencing a problem, just finished having a problem, or are about to have one."37 Though he never entered college, he had given more than $35 mn in college scholarships since 1973 to Chick-fil-A restaurant team members who wished to pursue higher education. He allowed employees to get a free meal for every five and a half hours of work. Instead of using generic job titles, he gave his employees titles like Leader, Influencer, and Stakeholder.38 Chick-fil-A conducted several employee-oriented training programs, which were thorough, customizable, and designed around the behaviors and operational aspects that really mattered to customers. The employees were fully equipped to handle anything, from cleaning the coffee filter to building the perfect sandwich to handling customer grievances. Another key element of the Chick-fil-A corporate identity was its policy of operating six days a week except on sunday.

Cathy carried over the practice from his original restaurant. The company's official policy said that "Cathy believes that being closed on Sunday says two important things to people: One, that there must be something special about the way Chick-fil-A people view their spiritual life and, two, that there must be something special about how Chick-fil-A feels about its people."39 Cathy believed that it was important to give his team one day off a week for them to stay fresh in body and soul. This, he felt, ultimately contributed to the company's benefit. "Giving employees and franchisees (referred to as operators at Chick-fil-A) at least one day off a week allows them to relax and return rejuvenated to their jobs, Kalinowski says, [a]nd, for customers, the knowledge that they cannot get Chick-fil-A on Sundays helps drive them to visit the chain when it is open,"40 American financial and business news website Business Insider's reporter Kate Taylor (Taylor) said.

Innovation

Innovation was one of the Chick-fil-A's core competencies, and the company used it to get ahead of its competitors. It focused on innovation at every stage of its business journey. Chick-fil-A's innovation framework was started by its Chairman and CEO Dan T Cathy (Dan) in 2009, and it started accelerating in 2012. Dan was keen to incorporate his own skills and talents into the business. He took an unconventional, yet personally and professionally rewarding approach to the Chick-fil-A leadership. He had spent much of his life building upon his father Cathy's vision to cater to customer needs and had exceeded customers' expectations. Cathy's innovative thinking flowed down to all of his children, and to the business's leaders and employees.

Innovation Center

In 2012, Chick-fil-A set up a nearly 80,000 square-foot innovation center under the leadership of Chick-fil-A's vice president for menu strategy and development, David Farmer (Farmer), and a cross-functional team and named the facility "Hatch." Located near the company's headquarters, Hatch was dedicated to helping the company invent its way forward by strengthening the customer experience and the brand and enriching the company's culture. Hatch included a virtual simulator, which was used to illustrate new restaurant concepts, technologies, and even kitchen operations. It allowed the company to put the entire innovation process under a single roof, with virtual 3D store design technology, full-size restaurant prototypes, and flexible workspaces. Hatch also allowed the company to bring customers and operators together and made them a part of the innovation process from the early stages. In 2014, the company created a second innovation facility-a 30,000 square-foot space called 'The Kitchen,' where it could work on new recipe ideas and improve existing products, procedures, and equipment to make the kitchens safer and more efficient.

The Hatch center was sufficient for a short while, but with the opening of more locations over a period, the design team found it was "not as big as we need anymore,"41 said Elizabeth Snively, senior coordinator of innovation at Chick-fil-A. This was particularly true for drive-thru work that needed more space. As drive-thru contributed to 60% of sales every year at Chick-fil-A, "this is a good one to spend money on,"42 said Tre Musco, CEO of the San Francisco restaurant design firm Tesser. To speed up service, the chain went in for two main changes-the first was to have a team of four to six servers walk up to cars in the drive-thru to take both orders and payments using a tablet; and the second was to have another set of servers walk to cars with their orders when they were ready. With these changes, the chain expected to shave minutes off of a drive-thru customer's wait time. In 2018, the company opened a Technology Innovation Satellite Office in Georgia Tech's Technology Square at the historic Biltmore. As a part of its long-standing partnership with the Institute, the Innovation Center emphasized Chick-fil-A's commitment to innovation. "This new facility will provide a dedicated space for Chick-fil-A to collaborate with the bright minds of Georgia Tech and develop technology solutions that will benefit our customers," said Chick-fil-A's Chief Information Officer Mike Erbrick. "Our founder Truett Cathy was a true innovator, and the Technology Innovation Center is one of the ways we're continuing his legacy."43 The company worked with faculty and students to explore design, innovation, and development projects. "We are very excited that Chick-fil-A is one of our corporate partners in the innovation ecosystem that we are building at Georgia Tech and nearby,"44 Georgia Tech President G P "Bud" Peterson said.

In the 2019 ranking of the top 100 most reputable companies compiled by the Reputation Institute, Chick-fil-A at the No. 51 position was recognized as the country's most respected and revered company, ahead of Amazon ranked No. 54.45 According to Hahn-Griffiths, "Among the people who know it and love it, Chick-fil-A delivers on the reputation drivers that matter-in linking high-quality products and services, to a high-minded sense of purpose, and a commitment to well-intended acts of good citizenship."46 Hahn-Griffiths attributed much of Chick-fil-A's rise to one of the top 100 most reputable companies to its focus on innovation.

Chick-fil-A worked through two different models of innovation-decentralized and centralized. The decentralized model encouraged everyone including the members of the innovation team to think about how to innovate in all areas of the business. The fast food chain was committed to innovation and formalized it through an operator-innovation team that met quarterly to look at innovative opportunities across the entire organization. The Chick-fil-A corporate support center partnered with operators to enhance the local experience. In that way, innovative ideas could come up from the local store to corporate and then filter out to the rest of the company. "Our best ideas come from our operators because they are in it each day. Then we come alongside to help them with it and scale innovation across our system. They help us get close to them and they give us direction, so that we can help create solutions that best serve them,"47 Cooper said.

Mobile Ordering

In 2018, Chick-fil-A started testing dine-in mobile ordering at its 80 restaurants in Tampa, Nashville, Seattle, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley. Since the testing began, the company had received a positive response from customers, particularly from those with large families with children. The company's internal research revealed that about 92% of customers who used the dine-in mobile ordering system found the feature most appealing due to its ease and convenience.48 "So many of our customers' busy lives and commitments have them strapped for time. Dine-in mobile ordering is one way we can help them get a quick, yet high-quality meal. This technology will be particularly helpful for busy parents who can now head straight into the restaurant and have their meal brought to their table at their convenience, without waiting in line,"49 said Cooper. In 2019, the fast food chain introduced a new in-store mobile ordering feature that helped customers to order from a table in the restaurant by using the Chick-fil-A app and get it delivered to their table. The mobile ordering system eliminated the need to stand in line or place an order at the counter. The dine-in mobile ordering worked in three stages-placing a "dine-in" order via the mobile app; finding a table in the Chick-fil-A dining room and tapping a smartphone on a table number; and allowing the store associate to bring the meal to the customer's table using their table number. To enable customers to tap their phone on the table number to check in, Chick-fil-A integrated Near Field Communication50 (NFC) technology into the table numbers.

Chick-fil-A entered a new era in which its mobile sales, delivery, and non-traditional formats like food trucks, fueled growth. The company's mobile sales witnessed rapid growth, with digital orders accounting for almost 20% of the chain's business in 2019, a significant increase from the end of 2018 when it was 16%.51 The chain's digital growth was fueled by its revamped app and new loyalty program, which it launched in August 2018.

Product Innovation

Chick-fil-A came up with the idea of offering a chicken sandwich when a local poultry supplier who had produced too many chicken breasts asked Cathy if he could use them. Cathy saw this as an opportunity and created a chicken sandwich, which could be a unique alternative to the hamburger. But to make it more delicious and to prepare it quickly, Cathy used the innovative method of using a pressure-fryer that cooked the chicken breast in the same time it took to make a fast food hamburger.

Over the years, Chick-fil-A developed a formal process where it systematically listened to customers and operators while coming up with new products, store designs, or hospitality initiatives.The company innovated on products that it served customers. It offered menu items like premium coffee, frosted lemonade, and a "superfood side" of kale and broccolini salad.52 Unlike many of its fast food rivals, Chick-fil-A rarely added new items to its menu. "We have a very high bar when it comes to adding a menu item, but the feedback from our customers in the test markets made this decision easy,"53 Amanda Norris, Chick-fil-A's head of menu and packaging, said. Continuing research on different sauce flavors at some franchises allowed the company to keep bringing value to customers, which in turn provided them delightful products and experiences. The new product development team worked to perfect the recipes, for which they coordinated with suppliers to source the ingredients.

Food Safety

Food safety was one of the key domains in which the company benefitted from machine learning. One of Chick-fil-A's notable achievements was that it depended on data from machine learning, expecting that employees would follow safety protocols every time they were asked to do so. The restaurant chain experimented with a separate AI-driven (Artificial Intelligence) system that instructed employees on how to clean their hands thoroughly before moving to other areas of the kitchen. It pointed out that if employees washed their hands "as often as they should," the risk of food-borne illness would be reduced by up to 80%.54

Chick-fil-A used a customized AI system that provided algorithms to analyze social media posts for potential food safety-related issues at its restaurants. The system helped the company to be more proactive in identifying and addressing food safety risks. Chick-fil-A aimed to develop an AI framework that could reliably identify keywords, phrases, and customer sentiment from posts to help find out emerging food-borne illness. The fast food chain's solution was hosted on Amazon Web Services55 (AWS), which processed restaurant review data every 10 minutes from social media platforms, filtering for words like "illness," "food poisoning", and "nausea."56 Social media was the most common customer feedback channel for food safety-related incidents, said Davis Addy (Addy), Chick-fil-A's senior principal IT leader of food safety and product quality. "For us in this journey with analytics and food safety, we are going from a place of hindsight to insight ... and eventually foresight so we can be more proactive in helping our Restaurants better identify and address food safety risks,"57 he said.

Customer Experience

To build its customer experience, Chick-fil-A focused on adapting to consumer trends and habits. "Ultimately our customers are all about convenience. ... We are increasingly demanding things be more and more convenient. And that pace is being set by the Amazons, the Netflixes, the Ubers of the world,"58 said Kevin Purcer (Purcer), Chick-fil-A's director of customer digital experience. Chick-fil-A led the industry in customer satisfaction, scoring the highest in both full- and limited-service categories of the restaurant chain (see Exhibit IV for America's Top Fast Food Restaurants). One such innovation was related to the drive-thru service, which used to be blocked during the meal order times. To ensure that they provided first service, local operators in respective stores asked their staff with notepads and cell phones to take orders from customers before they reached the speaker box. "We came alongside operators to help them make this innovation scalable and to make sure such service is safe for customers and team members. Now we are able to take orders with iPads in safe-walk zones and where team members can deliver meals to the cars safely,"59 Cooper said.

Employee Relationship

Innovation at Chick-fil-A was not limited to only Hatch, the Kitchen, or the marketing department; the fast food chain also encouraged everyone within the organization to share their ideas with each other. Chick-fil-A took care of its own people, who had the ultimate responsibility of caring of its customers. It promoted innovative thinking by encouraging people to move around in the organization. As the company grew, it created business generalists who in turn moved up through the organization and were in a position to grasp the totality of the business. They could work on capacity or investment or marketing or store growth, and in a later period, help make better decisions.

As a part of its commitment to developing employees' talent outside the scope of their assigned responsibilities, every executive committee member had to maintain a formal mentor relationship with at least two people in a year from outside their department. The employees made business trips together and spent time together regularly over lunch, interacting among themselves in a completely transparent but confidential manner. This relationship allowed them to understand each other's job and perspective on work better. The cross-departmental relationship demonstrated the brand touch points circle from new points of view that triggered innovation.

Chick-fil-A encouraged the employees to make decisions and try new things based on their observations. It offered scholarships and educational assistance opportunities to support employees in advancing their education. It hosted a student technology hackathon that worked with the employees to generate new technology concepts and tap into potential talent for its business. The student innovations offered some valuable insights into the company' future technologists and helped to continue its role as an innovator in the fast food industry.

Road Ahead

Even as Chick-fil-A grew rapidly along with innovations, the marketplace became more demanding and more competitive. It found it harder to maintain its blue ocean space of required innovation that demanded shorter cycle times. The QSR magazine reported that Chick-fil-A had the slowest drive-thru among its fast food peers. According to the magazine, Chick-fil-A's slow drive-thru times might be caused in part to its growing popularity. The fast food chain faced some criticism for its decision to remain closed on Sundays, which was a problem in locations like airports and sports stadiums. In November 2018, New Jersey-based private educational institution Rider University refused to bring Chick-fil-A to its campus despite the restaurant being the students' top choice, citing the chain's conservative "corporate values."60 According to the American higher education news website Campus Reform, Chick-fil-A's "corporate values have not sufficiently progressed enough to align with those of Rider."61 In 2018, some Pittsburgh Public School board members opposed Chick-fil-A's sponsorship of the Kids Marathon because of the company's stance on gay rights.62 The company's executives openly opposed same-sex marriage and donated to organizations with similar beliefs. "The leadership of Chick-fil-A has openly and passionately promulgated hateful beliefs against the LGBTQIA community,"63 the Pittsburg school board reported.

Notwithstanding the divisive nature of some of the brand's associations, it clearly became a major player with its ability to build strong emotional bonds with customers. According to MBLM's64 2019 Brand Intimacy study, Chick-fil-A improved across all six Brand Intimacy archetypes-fulfilment, identity, enhancement, ritual, nostalgia, and indulgence (see Exhibit V for Chick-fil-A Archetype Performance 2018 Versus 2019). The company's improved archetype performance showed the breadth and range of its ability to build emotional bonds with users in a variety of compelling ways. Further, the Brand Intimacy study revealed that among intimate users, the Chick-fil-A brand greatly improved its price resilience metrics with 26.7% of Chick-fil-A users saying they would be willing to pay 20% more for the brand's products.65 Chick-fil-A soared to become the third largest restaurant chain in the US in 2019 with $10.46 bn in American system-wide sales behind McDonald's Corporation with $38.52 bn and Starbucks with $20.49 bn (see Exhibit VI for Top 10 Restaurant Chains in the US by Sales). Analysts predicted that there was no reason to believe Chick-fil-A's growth would slow anytime soon. The fast food chain's growth posed a direct threat to rivals in an increasingly competitive restaurant industry where the chains were struggling to attract customers.

Chick-fil-A's focus on service and quality helped it to win a stellar reputation, enabling the chain to remain competitive even in a period of overall weakness for the fast food business. However, the chain was not free of stiff competition from rivals such as Popeyes that came up with its own popular chicken sandwich. According to the American foodservice research and consultancy firm Technomic, Inc., around 19% of Chick-fil-A customers went to Popeyes in August 2019, from 15% in July of the year.66 Farmer said that the chain had entered an innovation-centric age with options such as delivery, mobile payment, food trucks, and dark kitchens, designed exclusively for takeout orders being expected to drive its growth. In September 2019, Chick-fil-A opened

its first international restaurant in Toronto, Canada, and continued its international expansion with the opening of its first overseas restaurant in the UK in October 2019.

Purcer claimed that the fast food chain was preparing for future, in which digital orders could represent at least half of its business. He said the chain was working to bring its service and sense of appreciation to the digital experience. For this, investment in technology, changes in restaurant design, and new training for employees to couple accuracy with warmth were required, Purcer said. "I think the biggest opportunity is continuing to figure out how to evolve our restaurants as mobile continues to grow,"67 Cooper said. In terms of delivery, the chain was planning to incorporate unconventional solutions such as autonomous vehicles or drones, according to L J Yankosky, senior director of innovation and new ventures at Chick-fil-A. Looking ahead, analysts were of the view that Chick-fil-A had plenty of room for growth as it continued growing in under-penetrated areas outside of the South. "Once you start looking at all these other big metropolitan areas in all these states, there is room for growth for-not just years and years to come, but potentially decades to come,"68 restaurant research firm Kalinowski Equity Research founder Mark Kalinowski said.

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2. The Atlanta Assembly plant was a automobile factory owned by Ford Motors company (1947-2006).
3. Coleman Wood, "The Original Chicken Sandwich," www.thechickenwire.chick-fil-a.com, May 5, 2017.
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7. Headquartered in Mill Valley, California, Glassdoor is one of the world's largest job and recruiting sites.
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13. Ibid.
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15. Pamela N Danziger, "What Retailers Can Learn From Chick-Fil-A's 'Secret Sauce'," www.forbes.com, July 12, 2019.
16. Founded by Charles Fombrun and Cees van Riel in 1997, Reputation Institute is the world's leading reputation-based advisory firm, which helps leaders at the global companies build credibility with the people that matter most.
17. Established in 2000, GFSI is a global organization that helps organizations reduce food safety risks while building trust in the supply chain.
18. Animal Wellbeing Standards serve as rules of engagement for chicken suppliers across the US to meet the standards of farm animal welfare.
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22. Ibid.
23. The Harris Poll is a market research firm headquartered in Rochester, New York.
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25. Temkin Experience Ratings is a cross industry, open standard benchmark of customer experience.
26. "Chick-fil-A Selects Toronto for First International Expansion," www.bloomberg.com, July 25, 2018.
27. "Chick-fil-A to Build First Distribution Center in Bartow County," www.georgia.org, April 18, 2019.
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29. Airport Revenue News is a US-based media company that provides news coverage on issues impacting companies doing business in airports.
30. The ACSI is the cross-industry measure of customer satisfaction in the country. It gives businesses science-based insights across the complete domain of the customer experience.
31. Sonja Haller, "Chick-fil-A is America's No. 1 Fast Food Restaurant Again. Parents Love It and hate It," www.usatoday.com, June 27, 2019.
32. Founded in 1967, Nation's Restaurant News is an American trade publication that delivers restaurant industry news, data, marketing and financing trends to foodservice leaders.
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34. Pamela N. Danziger, "What Retailers Can Learn From Chick-Fil-A's 'Secret Sauce'," www.forbes.com, July 12, 2019.
35. "Chick-fil-A Inc. History," www.fundinguniverse.com
36. Sonja Haller, "Chick-fil-A is America's No. 1 Fast Food Restaurant Again. Parents Love It and hate It," www.usatoday.com, June 27, 2019.
37. "A Lesson in Customer Service from Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy," www.sas.com
38. LaToya Morrison, "Teaching & Chick-Fil-A," www.medium.com, June 21, 2018.
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40. Michael F Haverluck, "Chick-fil-A Now #3 Restaurant Chain in US," www.onenewsnow.com, June 21, 2019.
41. Venessa Wong, "Chick-fiA is Testing A New Solution To Crazy-Long Lines," www.buzzfeednews.com, March 8, 2016.
42. Ibid.
43. "Chick-fil-A Opens Innovation Center in Tech Square," www.treasury.gatech.edu, January 25, 2018.
44. Laura Diamond, "Chick-fil-A Opens Innovation Center in Tech Square," www.news.gatech.edu, January 25, 2018.
45. "What Retailers Can Learn From Chick-fil-A's 'Secret Sauce'," www.reputationinstitute.com, July 12, 2019.
46. Ibid.
47. Pamela N Danziger, "What Retailers Can Learn From Chick-Fil-A's 'Secret Sauce'," www.forbes.com, July 12, 2019.
48. "Chick-Fil-A Eliminates Lines with New Mobile Service," www.gra.world.
49. "Chick-fil-A Adds Dine-In Mobile Ordering," www.hospitalitytech.com, October 24, 2019.
50. NFC is a short-range wireless connectivity standard that uses magnetic field induction to help communication between devices like smartphones or tablets.
51. Kate Taylor, "Chick-fil-A's Mobile Sales are Skyrocketng as Execs Say the Chicken Chain is Entering a New Tech-obsessed Era," www.insider.com, May 21, 2019.
52. Jessica Wishart, "How Chick-Fil-A Uses Customer Delight as a Competitive Advantage," www.rhythmsystems.com, February 28, 2019.
53. Amelia Lucas, "Chick-fil-A Adds Mac and Cheese to Its Menu, Making a Rare Change," www.cnbc.com, August 12, 2019.
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55. AWS is a comprehensive, evolving cloud service from Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to individuals, companies, and governments.
56. Alicia Kelso, "Chick-fil-A Taps AI to Identify Food safety Issues," www.restaurantdive.com, May 28, 2019.
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58. Kate Taylor, "Chick-fil-A's Mobile Sales are Skyrocketing as Execs Say the Chicken Chain is Entering a New Tech-obsesses Era," www.insider.com, May 21, 2019.
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61. Neetu Chandak, "New Jersey University Squashes Students' Hopes of Bringing Chick-fil-A to Campus Over Chain's 'Corporate Values'," https://dailycaller.com, November 20, 2018.
62. Sarah Schneider, "Pittsburgh School Board to Vote on Resolution Opposing Pittsburgh Marathon Sponsor," www.wesa.fm, October 18, 2018.
63. Neetu Chandak, "School Members Pressure Kid's Marathon to Boot Chick-Fil-A Sponsorship for 'Hateful Beliefs'," https://dailycaller.com, October 19, 2018.
64. MBLM is a New York-based international multidisciplinary agency that focuses on creating greater intimacy between people, brands and technology.
65. "Fast Food Ranked in Top 40% of All Industries Studied in MBLM's Brand Intimacy 2019 Study," www.theglobeandmail.com, August 14, 2019.
66. Jonathan Maze, "Popeyes Takes Share from Chick-fil-A and KFC," www.restaurantbusinessonline. com, September 9, 2019.
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