Chick Fil A Founder S Cathy Truett Passes Away

Georgia restaurateur and philanthropist S Truett Cathy passed away from natural causes in the early morning hours on Monday at the age of 93. Final services were held on Wednesday at the First Baptist Church in Jonesboro, GA.

A devout Southern Baptist, Samuel Truett Cathy was born in central Georgia in 1921 and after attending high school in Atlanta, GA, served in the Army during WWII. After the war, Samuel returned home to the Peach state and along with his brother Ben, opened up a restaurant in the Atlanta suburb of Hapeville that specialized in chicken sandwiches. The Hapeville, GA restaurant was actually called the Dwarf grill because of its small size.

In the early 1960s, Samuel discovered a fryer that could prepare the chicken for his sandwiches in about the same time it took for many burger joints to prepare a burger. Running with that concept, Cathy opened the first Chick Fil A in Atlanta's Greenbriar Mall in 1967. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Chick Fil A expanded to a number of food courts throughout the southeastern USA. However, the first free-standing Chick Fil A restaurant wasn't opened until 1986. As of 2012, Chick Fil A has roughly 1000 locations across the USA, including airports, hospitals, sports venues and universities.

Besides the restaurant business, S Truett Cathy was also a Sunday school teacher for nearly 50 years. Samuel sought to incorporate many of his Baptist beliefs within Chick Fil A's corporate culture- most notably closing the restaurant on Sundays so that employees and management could spent time with family or go to church.

In 2001, Samuel stepped down and his son Daniel T Cathy took over day to day operations as CEO of Chick Fil A- although his father remained on the board of directors until late 2013. Like his father, Daniel was also a devout Baptist and said in a 2012 interview that he was against same-sex marriage. The fairly innocuous and bland statements brought down the wrath of the left and LGBT activists, accusing the restaurant of discriminating against gay and lesbian employees or customers. Seeking to capitalize on the controversy, the mayors of Chicago, Boston and San Francisco publicly stated that Chick Fil A would not be welcome in their cities [Chicago had two Chick Fil A locations before the 2012 controversy while there were no Chick Fil A locations in Boston or San Francisco proper; just the suburbs- NANESB!]. Calls for a boycott were countered with a 'buycott' from evangelicals and conservatives, bringing attention to a previously nondescript fast-food chain and breaking all single-day sales records.

The chicken-centric restaurant's slogan is "We didn't invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich" and their ad campaign in recent years features a pair of Holstein cows urging people to 'Eat Mor Chikin' while displaying misspelled signs. Most notably for sports buffs is that the restaurant secured sponsorship and the naming rights to the Peach Bowl in the 1990s.

Samuel Truett Cathy also wrote a number of motivational and how-to books, such as Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People; How Did You Do It, Truett? and It's Better to Build Boys Than Mend Men explaining some of his business practices or how to raise a family. In 1984, Cathy also founded the WinShape foundation which was meant to foster good ethics and success in business, marriage, academics and marriage.

In addition to the Chick Fil A Franchise, Cathy started up a number of other Atlanta-area eateries in recent years with an emphasis on causal dining in recent years, including Truett's Grill, Truett's Pizza Cafe as well as the original Dwarf House.

ChickFilA Reportedly Enjoys Record Turnout & Sales on 'ChickFilA Appreciation Day'

Line at Chick-Fil-A in Houston, TX on August 1, deemed by some Traditional marriage and First Amendment supporters to be "ChickFilA Appreciation Day"

Atlanta-based ChickFilA reported that the single day sales record for their restaurant chain had been shattered on Wednesday, Aug 1st- in what many supporters had billed 'ChickFilA Appreciation Day'. Some ChickFilA locations were so crowded that extra employees were called in to direct traffic in the parking lots and other locations reportedly ran out of food hours before they were scheduled to close for the night.

The privately held company declined to give specific sales figures but released a statement confirming that frenzied sales of chicken sandwiches and cross-cut waffle fries had made for a record-setting day.

"We are very grateful and humbled by the incredible turnout of loyal Chick-fil-A customers on August 1 at Chick-fil-A restaurants around the country," said Steve Robinson, executive vice president of marketing, in the statement. "While we don't release exact sales numbers, we can confirm reports that it was a record-setting day."

The support for the chicken sandwich chain wasn't limited to the Bible Belt either, as lines were wrapped around the building at locations from New Hampshire to California on Wednesday. While some customers lining up on Wednesday no doubt disagreed with ChickFilA CEO Dan Cathy's statements opposing same-sex marriage, it became a First Amendment issue when the mayors of Boston and Chicago threatened to use their offices to block any attempt at ChickFilA to set up shop or expand in their respective cities.

Another line at a ChickFilA location in suburban San Deigo, CA on August 1

A video filmed at a ChickFilA Drive-Thru in Arizona- apparently shot on ChickFilA appreciation day- shows a motorist videotaping himself pulling up to the window and asking for a free cup of water before berating the cashier over the CEO's recent statements.



Although he quickly erased the original video, a number of unedited copies went up on YouTube under different accounts. Within 24 hours, the man was identified as Adam Smith, a Chief Financial Officer with Tuscon-based medical equipment manufacturer Vante. By Thursday afternoon, Vante had reportedly dismissed Smith after deciding the video of himself at ChickFilA demonstrated that he had shown poor judgement. Smith has subsequently apologized to the cashier in another video released onto YouTube, but in that same video, he holds himself blameless for the series of events leading up to the loss of his job.

I suspect most of the participants of the ChickFilA Same Sex Kiss-In DIDN'T look like this, but a guy can dream, can't he?

On Friday, although not as well attended as the ChickFilA Appreciation Day, gay marriage supporters staged a same-sex 'kiss-in' at some locations. On Thursday, a Chicago-based LGBT group filed suit against ChickFilA with the Illinois Department of Human Rights alleging that the resturant's "intolerant corporate culture" violates state law and a provision in Illinois' Human Rights Act, although the suit declines to specifically mention any instances of harassment or discrimination against homosexual customers and employees.

Eat Mor Chikin: Atlanta-Based Chick Fil A Under Fire From Leftists Over CEO's Stance on Gay Marriage

The president of an Atlanta-based fast food chain has drawn the ire of gay and lesbian activists as well as Democrat politicians looking for a big juicy distraction after stating this his restaurant supports traditional marriage in an interview with a Baptist website earlier this month.

Chick Fil A Cookies & Cream milkshake- yum!

Started in Atlanta by restaurateur and devout baptist S Truett Cathy in 1967, Chick Fil A has grown to a chain of more than 1600 restaurants across 39 states specializing in chicken sandwiches, chicken strips, chicken wraps and chicken salads. The company also is the title sponsor for the Chick Fil A Peach Bowl which is played between one ACC college football team and one SEC school each New Year's Eve at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

Neither S Truett Cathy nor his son Dan Cathy are shy about their Baptist faith or incorporating it into their business model. In keeping with Cathy's faith, the restaurant remains closed on Sundays.

As you might be able to figure out, most Baptists are opposed to same-sex marriage. With more than 30 states voting at the ballot box to define marriage as being between a man and a woman, that's a viewpoint that's hardly fringe or in the minority.

Have the liberals who want to start a Chick-Fil-A boycott really thought this through?

LGBT groups and various democrat politicians desperate for a distraction have chimed in on Chick Fil A's stance on same sex marriage.

Among the first was Boston mayor Tom Menino, who penned a letter threatening to block any attempt by Chick Fil A to open up a location in Boston.

“It sends a strong message that the habit of supporting hateful organizations that demonize LGBT Americans are out of step with not just Bostonians but a majority of fair-minded Americans,” Menino told WBZ NewsRadio 1030 Thursday.

In it he said,”There is no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it.

“If they’re going to hurt people’s rights and social justice is involved. I’m going to speak up on that. No matter what it is. You might not like it, but I have to live with myself,” he said.

Curiously, Mayor Menino required no such ideological litmus test for the Islamic Society of Boston's mosque after selling them a city owned parcel of land for $175,000- far below the appraised $1.8 million. With two locations in the metropolitan Boston area, Chick Fil A was reportedly looking at opening a location on the campus of Northeastern university, which is inside Boston city limits.

Meanwhile, Obama's former-chief-of-staff now Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel was able to take time out from the escalating carnage in the Windy City to announce he would be protecting Chicagoans from the ever-encroaching menace of grilled chicken sandwiches.

"Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago’s values. They’re not respectful of our resident, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect the Chicago values,” said Emanuel.

Ah- I see. Apparently if Chick Fil A wants to do business in Chicago, they need to have a storied tradition of turning a blind eye to gang violence and organized crime, selling off political appointments to the highest bidder and utilize drug gangs like the Vice Lords and Gangster Disciples for the get-out-the-vote effort and reward them by steering contracts to their families and friends later on.

In a display of even more staggering hypocrisy, a few days after chiding Cathy, Rahm Emmanuel would praise fringe antisemitic Nation of Islam preacher Louis Farrakhan for dispatching his followers- known as 'The Fruit of Islam' to some of the violence-plagued areas.

To hardly anybody's surprise, the mayor of San Francisco also chimed in, even though the nearest Chick Fil A is some 40 miles away.

So there you have it- at least three mayors of large American cities who have pretty much come right out and said they would use zoning requirement and government bureaucracy to block or revoke a private company from opening their doors within city limits because they disagreed with an opinion held by somebody in the management. Now for the progressives who might have a difficult time wrapping their heads around why this might be a bad thing, let's say a staunchly conservative mayor or county commissioner found out a business owned by a liberal supporter of gay marriage and gun control wanted to open up a business in the community and decided to stack the deck against the liberal business owner and put all sorts of zoning and regulatory hurdles in the path of this would be business because the conservative politician disagreed with something the hypothetical business owner had said.

Sucks- doesn't it? Yet that's exactly the kind of behavior that Menino and Emanuel are engaging in.

Not surprisingly, various Hollywood has-beens would also chime in on the issue in an attempt to make themselves feel relevant again and in the process, reveal their own rather skewed definition of 'tolerance'.

Enter bitter, corpulent 'comedienne', Occupy Wall Street supporter and failed Green Party presidential candidate Roseanne Barr:

Interesting how a few short months ago Barr was calling for the wealthy to be summarily executed or sent to re-education camps, yet decided to boast about her own materiel wealth as some sort of witty rejoinder before resorting to 2nd grade insults- apparently her writers bailed on her long before the 2007 writers strike.

As you could probably gather from the above exchange, I decided to stop by my nearest Chik Fil A last week and even though I already had lunch, I decided to get a cookies and cream milkshake [pictured at top- NANESB!] as part of a 'buycott'.

In fact, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and other conservatives have encouraged people to go to Chick Fil A on August 1 as part of  "Chick Fil A Appreciation Day". Although the nearest Chick Fil A is some 35 miles away, I will probably be stopping by as it isn't too far out of my way for the commute to one of my temp jobs and I have some coupons that are expiring soon.