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,[8] and is near the location of the now-demolished Ford...
Read More
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,[8] 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.[9] 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,"[10] 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.[8]During the 1970s and early 1980s, the chain expanded by opening new locations in suburban malls' food courts.[11] The first freestanding location was opened April 16, 1986, on North Druid Hills Road in Atlanta, Georgia,[12] 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.[8] In October 2015, the company opened a three-story 5,000-square-foot restaurant in Manhattan that became the largest free-standing Chick-fil-A in the country at that time. As of 2016, the chain has approximately 1,950 locations. It also has 31 drive-through-only locations.Chick-fil-A also can be found at universities, hospitals, and airports through licensing agreements.
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.