Nightline on Chick Fil A
On Friday, ABC's Nightline featured Dan Cathy, president of Chic Fil A and son of the founder of the fast-food chain, on a series this week that focuses on the ten commandments. Much of this piece covers Chic Fil A's adherence to values of not working on the Sabbath. For Chic Fil A, that means its franchises close their stores on Sunday.
But what quietly shouts through on the video are keen business values, values that help the chain make up for closing its doors to customers for one day of the week. For example, although this past year it has had twenty five thousand franchise wannabees begging the company to accept their sizable investment dollars, the firm will only select and open 70 new franchises. THAT is highly controlled growth. The company owns a part of each franchised restaurant, retaining the rights of an owner. (That's not in the video.)
You can also see that the company's president stays glued to operational front lines by attending store grand openings, even camping out the night before. See how Chick Fil A's franchisees effectively engage the community. Some might argue that some of the actions in the video shows a deeply intuitive understanding of tribal marketing to a certain segment of the Christian community. And on it goes. WATCH.
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I dunno how I feel about that 50% partner thing. You do all the work and they have a 50% interest? Yes, an argument could be made for upsides to this but it is different than usual and AFAIK not widely emulated. That and the Christian thing; make me a little uncomfortable.
I don't care if they want to close their system on Sundays. I'd only care about BUSINESS principles, not whetehr someone claims they are Christian or not. This may be one of the FEW self-proclaimed Christian business that is NOT a cover for snookering you.
How I wish I had really pursued a partership with Chick Fil-a. The food is good, the costs are reasonable because the franchisor is a 50-50 partner in the restaurant and they treat their franchisees/partners with dignity and respect.
Unfortunately I didn't want a partner, didn't believe that a franchisor that operated with Christian principals could be different. I went with a flashy, fast growing QSR with edgy commercials. And while Chick Fil-a maintains a splendid reputation and its restaurants MAKE money doing business the old fashioned way Quiznos has turned on its partners. Rick Schaden has systematically sucked dry Q franchisees, sending thousands into bankruptcy and put thousands more on the brink of ruin.
It'll be interesting to see whether Chick fil-a will have to add any more locations to pass the Q in number of units open. Q is now down to 3800 open restaurants in the US.
when there are great franchise models that work and that can be compared to the mass of shocking franchises on offer.
I also though the Proforma concept was ingenius and with intelligent brand managment.
To be honest, I could not give a damn whether Chick Fil-a is a Christian outfit or not. As long as those principles are genuinely applied all should be well with Sunday and royalty contributions projecting growth.