Chick-fil-A cooks up recipe of customer loyalty

EAST POINT, Ga. — Every week, Harry Moss finds a cozy table at his neighborhood Chick-fil-A restaurant to read the entire newspaper and enjoy a salad garnished with the fast-food chain's staple — chicken.

However, he doesn't get to pore through the Sunday paper there. That day is when the fast-food chain's restaurants close to give employees a day of rest, a business decision 85-year-old founder Truett Cathy said has been a big factor in the company's success, by sticking to his doctrine of considering people before profits.

Chick-fil-A executives routinely say that the chain's 1,250 restaurants in 37 states, spanning from Georgia to California to Massachusetts, make as much money in six days a week as many of its competitors do in seven.

For nearly 40 years, Chick-fil-A has offered up a taste of the South, from its chicken sandwiches to sweet tea and biscuits and gravy. The Atlanta-based company — the 25th largest restaurant chain in the U.S. with more than $1.975 billion in sales in 2005 — has increased revenues by at least 11 percent a year for the past decade.

This year is expected to be a major milestone for the company, as its officials estimate Chick-fil-A will cross $2 billion in yearly sales for the first time.

"They make good competitors," Cathy said of his larger fast-food rivals. "We can outperform them because we teach our employees the importance to be kind to customers. Your customers become cheerleaders for you, and you have to do little advertising. They're worth more than TV and radio."

Chick-fil-A is also known for a decade-long campaign of TV and billboard ads that use witty cows who try to make sure people eat chicken, instead of them.

"It's extremely clever. ... They are positioned in a fast-food arena that's dominated by hamburgers, and it distinguishes them in a humorous way as a non-hamburger fast-food outlet," said Bill Guilfoyle, associate professor of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.

"But Chick-fil-A is not just about TV commercials or these billboards," said Guilfoyle. "They're about ... promoting that brand as an upstanding and positive fast-food company."

Cathy's entire life has been focused on serving up staples — as a little boy, he would make money by selling six bottles of Coca-Cola for a quarter and soon "realized a talent for pleasing customers." He later turned his entrepreneurial skills to the restaurant business, opening an Atlanta diner called The Dwarf Grill (named for the short and stout shape of the restaurant) with his brother, Ben, in 1946.