Chick-fil-A Brings Its Sandwich, and Its Values, to New York
More important, will eye-contact-averse New Yorkers take to a smiling staff uttering a string of pleasantries at a fast-food chain whose chief executive caused a national uproar a few years ago over his opposition to same-sex marriage?
Chick-fil-A, the fast-food juggernaut whose famous ads feature black-and-white cows bearing misspelled signs urging greater consumption of poultry, hopes so.
The company, privately held and built on a simple breaded chicken breast served on a soft, buttered bun lined with pickle slices, is opening its first full-service store in New York, one of the toughest and most unforgiving restaurant markets in the country.
But at a time when many fast-food restaurants are struggling, Chick-fil-A says it expects to post double-digit growth this year in stores open at least one year. Last year, such same-store sales grew 8 percent, according to the company, double the same-stores sales at KFC, whose numbers include sales at international stores.
David B. Farmer, the company’s vice president for menu strategy, said Chick-fil-A expected the Manhattan store, at 37th Street and Avenue of the Americas, to have more traffic than any of its other more than 1,900 stores. In fact, the company already refers to the next New York location, which will open next year at 46th Street and Avenue of the Americas, as “the relief valve.” (Chick-fil-A has a location with a limited menu in a food court at New York University.)
To keep up with anticipated demand, the company’s new store will have eight registers and two more on standby to handle overflow. And it has trained 18 employees to use hand-held devices to take orders from customers waiting in the line that is expected when it officially opens on Saturday.
The company is well aware that many New Yorkers have never heard of it; it says more than three-fourths of the 160 people hired to staff the Manhattan location were similarly unfamiliar.
It also knows that the New Yorkers who have heard of Chick-fil-A are most likely to know about it because of the controversy raised by comments made in 2012 by its chief executive, Dan T. Cathy, expressing his opposition to same-sex marriage.
Nonetheless, Chick-fil-A’s store in downtown Chicago at State and Lake, which opened in 2013, is the company’s highest-volume location, and restaurant industry specialists say the company’s commitment to the Christian values of its founder may actually attract customers.
According to the trade publication QSR, the company’s annual sales per store are among the highest in the fast-food business — $3.1 million — even though Chick-fil-A outlets are not open on Sunday. McDonald’s, in comparison, had an “average unit volume” of $2.5 million last year over seven business days each week.
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Two years after the uproar over Mr. Cathy’s comments on same-sex marriage, which set off both protests and shows of support at the company’s restaurants, Mr. Cathy told USA Today in a rare interview: “All of us become more wise as time goes by. We sincerely care about all people.”
“The values thing actually helps them,” said Victor Fernandez, executive director for insights at TDn2K’s Black Box Intelligence unit, which collects data on restaurant sales and performance. “Those strong values resonate with a lot of people — and Chick-fil-A has a strong product, too, which doesn’t hurt.”
Aaron Allen, a restaurant consultant, agreed. “Unlike any other restaurant organization we’ve seen, there’s more religion baked into Chick-fil-A as a brand — and it works for them,” Mr. Allen said.
He said the company also benefited from superior execution — in some locations, 60 to 100 cars go through the drive-in lane in an hour — and the simplicity of its menu. “The product is very simple, a breaded chicken breast, but they somehow manage to convey with the cleanliness of their stores and their service that the quality is somehow higher, not health food but healthier than most fast food,” Mr. Allen said.
Mr.
Farmer said that Chick-fil-A did not expect protests at the Manhattan
store when it opened, but that if demonstrators showed up, “we’ll go out
and try to talk to them and try to understand their point of view.”
Oscar
Fittipaldi is the “owner-operator” of the store. A veteran of the
Argentine Navy and the United States merchant marine, Mr. Fittipaldi
opened a store for Chick-fil-A in northeast Philadelphia in 2010.
“Joining
the civilian world was actually quite a challenge,” Mr. Fittipaldi
said. “When someone would come and tell me a truck was delayed and thus a
shipment wouldn’t arrive on time, I was like, how could that be? How
can business work that way?”
But business did work, and today, the Philadelphia store is one of the best-performing Chick-fil-A units in the Northeast.
Mr. Fittipaldi, however, no longer presides over it. One of the Chick-fil-A policies that most intrigues restaurant analysts and consultants is its insistence that most operators manage just one store. “There are some operators with two, and a handful with three, but we think having one person, one family, focus on one store provides better attention to detail and investment in the stores,” Mr. Farmer said.
Chick-fil-A itself owns or rents the stores and splits the profits each store generates 50-50 with its owner-operator. The New York store is in the garment district, and its landlord is M&J Trimming, a shop selling seemingly every trim known, right next door.
The building, built in 1928, was formerly occupied by another trim shop and apparently had not been renovated in decades. “The challenge was the form of the building, which had been divided into several tenant and storage spaces and was over three floors,” said Chuck Rice, senior architect for Chick-fil-A. “We had never designed a store over three levels, and we knew immediately that we were going to have to serve the maximum number of customers possible on the street level.”
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Perhaps the biggest question hanging over Chick-fil-A as it opens in New York is how it will provide the “Southern friendly” sort of service that is a hallmark of its stores elsewhere. Workers who interact with customers will be expected to try to exchange a pleasantry when a customer approaches, as a meal is handed over and as a customer leaves the store, as well as provide what the company calls “second mile service.”
At corporate headquarters in Atlanta, though, executives are more interested in whether Chick-fil-A’s customers will have their own, distinctive version of “pay it forward,” a phenomenon found throughout the country in the company’s drive-through lanes. (Starbucks also experiences a similar practice from time to time.)
One driver reaches the payment window at a Chick-fil-A and spontaneously asks to pay for the order — and the order placed by the car behind her, often kicking off a chain reaction. At one location in Georgia earlier this year, more than 200 customers treated the next customer in line to a meal.
“We’ve all been wondering if something like that will happen here, and if it does, what it will look like,” Mr. Farmer said. “I’m sure if it does, it will have a New York spin to it.”
Chick-fil-A itself owns or rents the stores and splits the profits each store generates 50-50 with its owner-operator. The New York store is in the garment district, and its landlord is M&J Trimming, a shop selling seemingly every trim known, right next door.
The building, built in 1928, was formerly occupied by another trim shop and apparently had not been renovated in decades. “The challenge was the form of the building, which had been divided into several tenant and storage spaces and was over three floors,” said Chuck Rice, senior architect for Chick-fil-A. “We had never designed a store over three levels, and we knew immediately that we were going to have to serve the maximum number of customers possible on the street level.”
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
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Continue reading the main story
Perhaps the biggest question hanging over Chick-fil-A as it opens in New York is how it will provide the “Southern friendly” sort of service that is a hallmark of its stores elsewhere. Workers who interact with customers will be expected to try to exchange a pleasantry when a customer approaches, as a meal is handed over and as a customer leaves the store, as well as provide what the company calls “second mile service.”
At corporate headquarters in Atlanta, though, executives are more interested in whether Chick-fil-A’s customers will have their own, distinctive version of “pay it forward,” a phenomenon found throughout the country in the company’s drive-through lanes. (Starbucks also experiences a similar practice from time to time.)
One driver reaches the payment window at a Chick-fil-A and spontaneously asks to pay for the order — and the order placed by the car behind her, often kicking off a chain reaction. At one location in Georgia earlier this year, more than 200 customers treated the next customer in line to a meal.
“We’ve all been wondering if something like that will happen here, and if it does, what it will look like,” Mr. Farmer said. “I’m sure if it does, it will have a New York spin to it.”
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