Closed On Sundays

As Truett Cathy was growing up, all businesses were closed on Sundays. He was always so grateful for the day of rest because he and his brother, Ben, switched everyday rotating working 12-hour shifts. When the mall where his first store was located began to open on Sundays, Truety decided that Chick-fil-A would stay closed. The decision would affect Chick-fil-A's reputation more than any other. Some people praise Chick-fil-A and others are just plain confused.

Not opening on Sundays has even prevented Chick-fil-A from being able to open in specific malls that have a seven day a week contract with businesses within the mall. Most people can't believe a business would miss out on an opportunity for making more money. Chick-fil-A wants to give their employees and equipment a rest. It is also just the right thing to do. Truett Cathy tells customers, "You can eat with us six days out of a week, and I will give you permission to eat somewhere else on Sundays.".

Tim Hawkins, a comedian, drew attention worldwide when he sang a song about Chick-fil-A being closed on Sundays. The song is posted below. The Chick-fil-A stores in DFW want to reward some of their raving fans by feeding them dinner and taking them to a Tim Hawkins concert this weekend. Each store is taking six raving fans to the concert this weekend. Find out more about Tim Hawkins at his website: http://www.timhawkins.net/

Face to Face Drive Thru

Many of you have noticed over the past few months that when you pull into the drive-thru lane we have a team member outside at the menu board ready to take your order. This process, which is approved and encouraged by Chick-fil-A, Inc. is called Face-to-Face Ordering. Face-to-Face began several years ago in Austin, TX because some city limits decided that having an order box in the drive-thru lane was considered "noise pollution" and they were not allowed to be installed at our new locations. Thru the ingenuity of some owners, they figured out a way to take orders in the drive-thru lane without using a speaker box. These original stores used walkie-talkies, cell phones and finally figured out a way to use headsets. But, what they also found using this process was an enormous amount of benefits for any Chick-fil-A location:

• Speed in the drive thru was almost doubled


• Order accuracy went to 100%


• The wait time for a customer on special orders went down


• Traffic congestion was eased in the parking lot


• Customers told us they loved interacting with a person and not a box


• Customers rated their overall experience higher

At Chick-fil-A Founders Square, here in Flower Mound, we employ Face-to-Face ordering during peak business hours. Your experience should always go something like this:

• You pull up in the drive-thru lane


• You are greeted by a Chick-fil-A team member


• They ask if you already know what you would like to order or do you need to see a menu


• The team member listens to your order and writes it down. They repeat the order back to you.


• They call in your order and give you a total

On a typical day, we have seen great results with Face-to-Face at our location. Here are a few:

• Instead of 78 cars in an hours, we have done up to 130 cars in that same hour


• Order accuracy is at 100%


• After the initial change, customers have rated their experience higher


• Special orders wait less at the window or in a parking spot

I know that pulling up to drive-thru and seeing someone standing there to take your order may seem a little awkward at first, but give it a try. It really is a faster more pleasant experience that you will come back for time and again.

Everything Spicy

Do you love hot food? In the past year,Chick-fil-A has begun serving spicy products!!! We offer Spicy Chicken Sandwiches (great with lettuce, tomato and pepper jack cheese), Spicy Chicken Biscuits, Spicy Cool Wraps and Spicy Southwest Salads with spicy dressing. Wash your hot meal down with our very own fresh brewed sweet tea or our freshly hand squeezed lemonade.

Spicy Chicken Deluxe Sandwich: A boneless breast of chicken, seasoned with a spicy blend of peppers, hand-breaded, pressure-cooked in 100% refined peanut oil and served with dill pickle chips on a toasted, buttered bun. Also available with lettuce, tomato and pepper jack cheese.

Spicy Chicken Biscuit: A breakfast portion of our boneless breast of chicken, seasoned with a spicy blend of peppers, hand-breaded, pressure-cooked in 100% refined peanut oil served on a fresh baked buttermilk biscuit.

Spicy Chicken Cool Wrap: Slices of spicy grilled chicken breast nestled in a fresh bed of green leaf lettuce with shredded red cabbage, tomato slices and a subtle blend of Monterey Jack and Cheddar cheeses tightly rolled in multi-grain flatbread. Served with spicy dressing (or your choice). Made fresh daily.

Southwestern Chargrilled Salad: Slices of spicy grilled chicken breast on a fresh blend of Romaine and Iceberg lettuce, with shredded red cabbage and carrots, vine-ripened grape tomatoes, a roasted corn and black bean relish and a subtle blend of Monterey Jack and Cheddar cheeses. Served with tortilla strips and spicy dressing (or your choice of dressing). Made fresh daily.

Second Mile Service

Second Mile Service is taking the servant spirit to a new level. It requires team members to go above and beyond the requirements of not just having what they expect, but making the experience remarkable. A woman stopped at a Chick-fil-A and explained to a team member that she was traveling and had left her wallet and still had another several hours to travel. She had no money for food or gas. The team member not only gave her a free meal, but gathered together with other team members to collect twenty-six dollars out of their own pockets. Over seventy percent of our employees are under the age of twenty one. The Second Mile Service we train, teaches our teenagers to have a heart for others. Chick-fil-A commits to invest in young people through training, encouragement, motivation and mentoring. What Second Mile Service have you experienced at our store?

Donations

Chick-fil-A at Founders Square loves to give back and is proud to be a community partner. Please fill out the Donation Request Form on the community page of our website and we will review it for consideration. Please provide your request one month prior to your event to allow us time to plan with you and make your event a success. I will contact you within 5-7 business days to let you know if we will be able to help with your donation. Find the donation request form on the community page of our website at: www.chick-fil-a.com/founderssquare

Chick-fil-A Founders Square

At Chick-fil-A at Founders Square, we believe in providing our guests the best restaurant experience we can. Our team prides itself on providing great tasting food and a comfortable environment in which to enjoy it.

We're committed to providing Second Mile Service and we strive to exceed your expectations. Whether it's the friendly greeting as you walk in, the hot food or the comfortable dining environment, we hope you will have a great experience at our restaurant.

Our mission is to be the heart of the Flower Mound community, nourishing the stomach and the soul. Community is important to us and it is our hope that we can enrich the lives of all of our customers. We enjoy getting to know our guests and look forward to any opportunity to give back to this community who has so graciously supported us. The next time you are in our restaurant, please introduce yourself. It would be our pleasure to meet you.

Thank you for your loyalty to Chick-fil-A. We look forward to continuing to serve this great community!

Note from Jason Driscoll, Store Operator

To the Chick-fil-A Raving Fans,

I hope you are enjoying this blog as much as we are in being able to provide you more insight into the Founders Square store and Chick-fil-A in general. I became a Chick-fil-A Owner/
Operator a little over 8 years ago. I had previously been a pastor in the United Methodist Church for nearly 14 years in Georgia. I pastored everything from new church "plants" to being the executive pastor for a 5000 member congregation. About 9 years ago, I felt like my family and I needed to move back home to Texas; but we needed to be in a position to put down roots and not keep relocating every 3 years. So I left the local church and turned in an application (the day the moving van pulled out of Georgia) to become a Chick-fil-A Owner.

About 2 weeks after arriving in Texas, I got a call from Chick-fil-A. They had a store in Flower Mound that was struggling, the previous owner left Chick-fil-A and they wanted to know if I was interested. I took a chance. Every month in the previous three years that the store had been open, it lost money. In my first month, we broke through and I wrote a profit check for less than $100 for the month of December 2002. That was all the motivation I needed; I knew this store could make it. Since then because of the community's support and amazing team, this location has continued to grow. We have won numerous awards with Chick-fil-A and actually become one of only a few stores in the chain that trains new owners.

My future plans continue to be to grow this location, develop amazing leaders (both high schoolers and adults) and support the town of Flower Mound which we also call home. Many people still ask me if I miss the ministry. I guess I do miss preaching occasionally, but ministry takes place in our store everyday. Like our mission statement say, "Our desire is to be the heart of Flower Mound; nourishing both the stomach and the soul." Thank you for your continued support and the opportunity to serve the Flower Mound community.

Jason Driscoll
Owner/Operator
Chick-fil-A Founders Square (2499 & 3040)

Be Our Guest Card

The Be Our Guest card (BOG) is an invitation to try a specific Chick-fil-A item for free. The Be Our Guest card was designed to not only act as a coupon, but to give us personal contact with potential customers. In new markets, BOG cards are a way to get people to try our products. In current markets, BOG cards help us introduce new products or reward our raving fans and give them an opportunity to have something free. Chick-fil-A does not believe in coupons offering a percentage or dollar amount off the price. Who wouldn't want free food? A BOG is a Chick-fil-A's unique gift to our customers.

S. Truett Cathy's Rule to Live By

Truett Cathy believes being kind to customers is the key to success. He lives by the Biblical commandment to love your neighbor as yourself and the Gold Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. One theme at an annual Chick-fil-A seminar was, "Courtesy is cheap, but it pays great dividends."

A customer called Chick-fil-A corporate one day to tell a story about the service he received while he dined at The Dwarf House. As he finished his meal, the waiter told him that he was going to take care of his meal. The customer was shocked and did not understand. Truett was in the restaurant a short time later and asked the waiter why he had paid for the man's meal. The waiter explained to Truett that it was out of friendship. Truett then asked the waiter if the customer had returned. Of course, the customer had returned often and the waiter's tips had greatly improved. The waiter had taken the time to be kind and it paid great dividends. The customer was now a friend and a raving fan of Chick-fil-A.

Chick-fil-A's corporate purpose is 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. I think the waiter at The Dwarf House is a perfect example of living out our purpose!

Chick-fil-A Served Burgers??

Many people find it weird that Chick-fil-A's first restaurant, The Dwarf House, got its start selling burgers, steaks and fried chicken (on the bone). In the late 1950s, airlines began to serve chicken as their in-flight meal. There would be left over pieces because the chicken would have to be cut to fit the tray. Truett Cathy contacted the owners of a food company who supplied Delta Airlines and asked for the extra boneless chicken. Truett then began to experiment. He did consumer research by having customers try his fried, boneless chicken and give suggestions. After tweaking the recipe a couple of years, Truett was using over twenty ingredients and felt like he had a winning combination.

Truett knew that he wanted the chicken on a sandwich because so many of his customers were always in a hurry to go back to work. He found that a hamburger bun was the key. Truett buttered the bun and added two pickles to the sandwich. The next step was to name the product. For several years, it was called the Chicken Steak Sandwich. Truett worked with the words "chicken" and "fillet". After putting them together, he changed "chicken-fillet" to "Chick-fil-A". The "A" stood for Grade A. The name was trademarked in 1963.

"The name Chick-fil-A captures the essence of what we do. It has forced the organization to be very disciplined and stay focused on chicken- the best part of the chicken. After forty years you could make a good argument that it was a stroke of genius- the name and how it has protected our focus."- Steve Robinson, Senior VP of Chick-fil-A.

The Dwarf House

Truett Cathy and his brother, Ben, opened The Dwarf House in 1946. The first day sales were $58.20. The Dwarf House serves steakburgers and hamburgers unlike other Chick-fil-A locations. they also serve deep-fried pies in peach, apple and sweet potato flavors. When you first arrive at The Dwarf House, you notice the "dwarf-sized" front door. The Dwarf House is open 24 hours a day, closes at 4:00am Sunday morning, and reopens at 6:00am on Monday.

The way Truett and Ben were able to gain customers was to give free food. "I did give away a lot of food. That was the best way I knew to attract customers to a new restaurant and make friends. Everybody loves free food. Once we got the customers in the door, we knew we could keep them with good service and good food. That model- offering free food to get people to try us out- would become our model for building a customers base at Chick-fil-A twenty years later." S. Truett Cathy

S. Truett Cathy

"Nearly every moment of every day we have the opportunity to give something to someone else- our time, our love, our resources. I have always found more joy in giving when I didn't expect anything in return."- S. Truett Cathy

Truett Cathy and his brother, Ben, opened a diner called The Dwarf Grill in 1946. We now know the diner as The Dwarf House. Truett's unique way of customer service helped him build his business over the years. He opened his first Chick-fil-A in 1967 at Atlanta's Greenbriar Shopping Center. Chick-fil-A has since become a huge success with over 1500 restaurants in 38 states. Chick-fil-A is the second largest quick service chicken chain in the United States. Chick-fil-A holds a record of 42 consecutive years of annual sales increases.

Truett Cathy's pride and joy is his family. He and his lovely wife, Jeannette, have two sons who work alongside their father. Dan is the president of Chick-fil-A and Bubba is the senior vice president. Truett and Jeannette have 12 grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and more than 150 "foster children".