The brand IS the business.
This is not a new concept, but it was new to Chick-fil-A in the 1980s. Corporate leadership believed “the brand” was the domain of the marketing department. Whatever we did with marketing, advertising, and public relations constituted the brand. In reality, the brand is the totality of the customer experience with the business.
Everything the customer sees and touches shapes the brand: the menu, store design, cleanliness of the bathroom, packaging, advertising, promotions, team members, and even their apparel are all part of the brand. Any customer touchpoint shapes the brand, and it either adds value to the brand or denigrates it.
About ten years ago we committed to put on paper the Chick-fil-A brand architecture, allowing anyone to see at a glance the entire system of these “brand touchpoints” interactions and how they fit together and how they should drive our innovation priorities.
It started with the corporate purpose—why we existed. Then, our mission, “Be REMARKable.” We wanted every brand encounter to be remarkable. A key to our success was that customers talked about us in a positive way. To inspire those positive remarks, we offered the unexpected, so they were surprised. We did that through finding ways to express our brand essence: “Where good meets gracious.”
We illustrated the brand touchpoints around a wheel with the brand essence at the center, because if you lay that wheel on top of an organizational structure, you can’t have any functional silos. Everyone has to work around the wheel. All around the circle, even if marketing does not have direct accountability, marketing has influence in the work. And specifically, every noted brand touchpoint has a cross-function team working on it: its plan, budget, and execution.
Marketing’s first line of influence was supporting the Operator, who was serving the customer—and not just the customer’s tangible, functional product experience. The Operator was reinforcing the feeling that, yes, Chick-fil-A delivered well, and they did it with grace today. Not only inside the restaurant, but in the drive-thru, or over at that baseball game, or in that office catering event. We delivered “where good meets gracious” in whatever environment the customer was in.
We didn’t look at customers as, “Oh, we have two thousand customers a day going through a particular store.” No, we’ve got two thousand people choosing to visit that store. They each have their own issues, problems, challenges—they each have their own story. They’re in the midst of a story at the very moment they encounter Chick-fil-A. Now, how did we impact their story? How did we deliver “where good meets gracious”? How did we help make their story today better? Quite frankly, they may not be having a very good day, and Chick-fil-A has the potential to help change the script.
The home office supported Operators with a brand strategy and brand architecture, and also with all the infrastructure services that allowed them to focus on delivering the brand. They couldn’t focus on delivering and building the Chick-fil-A brand if they were worried about their IT systems or accounting or whether the next delivery would come on time. All those things had to work in order for them to focus on the customer. (For further details, see brand architecture and brand touchpoints circle in the photo insert, pages 5–6.)
Remembering Our “Why”
By the summer of 2012, Truett had been demonstrating to me for more than thirty years that he wanted to build a relationship with every customer—to earn their business and their respect. His sensitivity and his desire to please others was paramount. He avoided social, political, and religious activism because he knew those things divided relationships. On the other hand, everybody enjoys good food and being cared for.
Of course, Truett had opinions and beliefs, but he had chosen not to use his business as a platform for those.
In 2012, we experienced a public relations crisis that drove us back to our “why.” Why does Chick-fil-A exist? When we had debated the words of the corporate purpose in 1982, there had been extensive discussion about how best to glorify God. That was an undeniable desire on the part of Truett, Dan, and Bubba Cathy, and members of the executive team. That led to the “how”: by being faithful stewards of all God entrusted to the business.
Truett wanted a business that had a God-honoring testimony visible through being good stewards of people, money, and influence. Ultimately, as his favorite verse, Proverbs 22:1, reminded us, reputation is more important than any earthly riches. While discussing this point, Truett told his young team that he saw Chick-fil-A as a powerful testimony on how to treat and serve others, and he wanted to do that on the largest platform possible. As a part of this goal, he made it clear he did not desire Chick-fil-A to be a platform for social, political, or religious narratives or positions. I heard him reiterate this point many times through the years.
He operated a business that served anyone and everyone—“have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A”—in a way that might cause people to recognize a distinctive difference in their Chick-fil-A experience, and might even cause people to ask, “What makes Chick-fil-A different?” By serving everyone, he and the executive committee hoped to earn a place of good reputation and influence in their lives, allowing the local Operators to address the “why.”
In 2012, when Chick-fil-A stood in the middle of a cultural debate, we did not want to water down what the Cathy family believed, yet we wanted to be faithful to the “why” of our corporate purpose of honoring God by “having a positive influence on all we touched.”
It was an extremely difficult time throughout the Chick-fil-A family. Restaurant Operators and their team members didn’t want to be the rope in this tug-of-war. And yet, they could look out the restaurant window and see people on both sides of the debate using Chick-fil-A to further their agendas. And what did they do? The gracious thing. They gave them free sandwiches and lemonade, with no prompting from the home office. Exactly what Truett would have done!
Don Perry and I were trying to manage the social narrative, which too often remained beyond our control. We just wanted to bring us back to a place where Chick-fil-A could have a positive influence on all we touched.
And how did we “touch” people? We could throw out social media or public relations statements from the support center, but the real power of stewardship and positive influence rested in the hands of the more than one thousand Operators in their restaurants, attracting and developing young talent and serving their communities up close and personal. We had always been focused on equipping and supporting them in their Chick-fil-A business. That included an opportunity to serve and influence as many people as possible.
After reflection time and much discussion, we released a brief statement:
The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity, and respect—regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation, or gender.
This crisis turned into a blessing because it forced us back to our past. What in our past was still crucial to our future? We engaged the Prophet consulting group and its founder, Scott Davis, and partner, Mike Fleming, to help us hear from our customers.
The customers reminded us that Operators and their teams brought to life the best of Chick-fil-A. They were our future. They met, greeted, and served people with genuine, caring service. And they extended the spirit of gracious hospitality that Truett had always modeled and preached. He designed the Operator model to re-create that hospitality in every Chick-fil-A location.
Because of the way Operators responded to this crisis, we saw the reality of a business that did genuinely desire to honor God by serving everyone in a way that communicated authentic concern and graciousness. At its core, the Chick-fil-A Corporate Purpose was about being good stewards of God’s grace to Truett, his family, and all those who shared his business vision. I am convinced, based on the experience of being in the room when the corporate purpose was written, that this was Truett’s heart—his vision and desire. I found it amazingly refreshing and encouraging to be able to join him in that kind of purpose—a clear “why” the business existed and implicitly, as I have highlighted, the embedded principles by which we would lead and make decisions.
The summer of 2012 eventually resulted in a renewed brand clarity. The customer data that Prophet received showed that Chick-fil-A customers believed they owned the brand, something every business dreams of, and it was a significant part of their lives. They said the Chick-fil-A they knew and loved did not align with the descriptions they were reading on social media. “The Chick-fil-A I know is courteous, caring, and offers good food,” they said—Operators and their team members at their best!
During a period of months, we were encouraged as we saw Operators continuing to create a place where good meets gracious. Customer feedback gave us those four words, where good meets gracious, which we realized were the essence of the Chick-fil-A brand.
• Where. Anywhere, not just in a restaurant, but any encounter with the Chick-fil-A brand. “Anywhere I encounter Chick-fil-A, I expect it to be . . .”
• Good. Good people, good food, good environment, good service.
• Meets. Connections. Eye contact. “My pleasure.” And encounters that say Chick-fil-A Operators, team members, employees, and staff genuinely care about you.
• Gracious. Gracious hospitality and the personal touches people don’t expect, especially in a fast-food restaurant.
Good people, good food, good environment delivered with a spirit of graciousness to all . . . at our restaurants, the events they serve, and those who work there. My confidence level was and remains high that the Chick-fil-A Operator family has and will continue to stay focused on creating those kinds of encounters. They and their teams are the brand. They know and love Chick-fil-A’s purpose and know how to gracefully live it out.
In the midst of these events, Don Perry, vice president of public relations, who did everything with a spirit of humility and graciousness, passed away on July 27, 2012. The loss of our good friend was painful. But when his wife, Marilyn, asked me to deliver one of the eulogies, Don’s memorial was easy to write because of his character, wonderful personality, and influence. Although I was emotional, it was a joy to share about a man I had grown to love and respect so much. On the same day we celebrated Don’s life and legacy, millions of customers were standing in lines at Chick-fil-A locations across America to show their support for Chick-fil-A. It was a challenging day for me—a day when I experienced God’s peace among Don’s family and loving friends who had packed the church to honor him. A day that reminded me of what is really important—our heavenly and earthly relationships. But it was also a day that reaffirmed my commitment to do all I could to position the reality of Chick-fil-A—a place of graciousness, humility, and hospitality. Truett, the Operators, and Don deserved that.
Innovating to Maintain Brand Relevance
Innovation has always been key to Chick-fil-A’s success, beginning with the creation of the sandwich itself. We continued to engage in an ongoing, constantly moving process of change in order to keep the brand relevant. Brand relevance, not just innovation for its own sake, was a top priority of the marketing group—to keep the brand relevant to customers’ lifestyles, tastes, and expectations.
Through the decades, we developed and honed a formal process where we systematically listened to customers and Operators as we innovated products, store designs, or hospitality initiatives.
In the menu space alone, innovation led to Chick-fil-A nuggets and soup, waffle fries, and kids’ meals with toys that made a positive influence. When customers indicated they wanted us to step up our salad options beyond coleslaw and carrot and raisin salad, we wondered if they would buy a side salad. The answer, they told us very quickly, was yes. The success led us to develop an entire salad lineup.
Encouraged by the nutritional halo of salads, we developed grilled chicken recipes that gave us both sandwich and salad options.
Frank Carney and Shane Todd, veteran Operators in north Georgia, pioneered their own milkshakes, and when we saw the buzz they were creating, we took on the challenge. The new product development team worked to perfect the recipes, coordinating with suppliers to source the ingredients. We started with Frank’s and Shane’s proven milkshakes and worked on the recipe and procedures. But it was taking too long to prepare a shake. And we were burning up spinners and tearing up cups.
There wasn’t equipment on the market that could deliver a milkshake in our packaging fast enough. So our engineering team worked for almost two years to create and produce a mixer that could stand up to the volume and be easy to use in stores. The end result: milkshakes are now a huge part of the Chick-fil-A brand experience.
Even as we were innovating as rapidly as we should and could, the marketplace became more demanding and more competitive, and we had to work harder to maintain our Blue Ocean space. The pace of required innovation demanded shorter cycle times, so under the leadership of David Farmer and a cross-functional team, we created a nearly one-hundred-thousand-square-foot innovation center, which opened in 2012. We named the facility “Hatch.” It allowed us to put the entire innovation process under a single roof, with full-size restaurant prototypes, virtual 3-D store design technology, and flexible workspaces. Hatch also allowed us to bring customers and Operators physically into the early stages of the innovation process.
We could brainstorm and get feedback on conceptual ideas, whether they were products, technology, advertisements, menu board layouts, or team member apparel. We got immediate customer feedback. We could prototype store designs, serve food, or exercise hospitality role-playing under the same roof. Before Hatch, the only “live” way to experience customer interaction with new ideas was in actual restaurants—a slower process.
In 2014, we created a separate space dedicated wholly to food, the Kitchen, a thirty-thousand-square-foot facility where we could work on new recipe ideas and improve existing products, procedures, and equipment to make kitchens safer and more efficient.
At any time, we had fifteen or twenty projects going on in Hatch or the Kitchen, suggested by people throughout the organization. No matter their role or position in the business, anyone could champion a great idea for strategic support, team talent allocation, and innovation process funding. Innovation was most often fostered by folks closest to customers and Operators. When creative people worked in a creative environment where everybody around them was focused on innovation, that creativity became contagious.
Another benefit of Hatch and the Kitchen was that all the project leaders were using the same innovative processes. They were all listening to customers and Operators on the front end. Then they took their ideas to their respective desks with pen and pencil, or with computers and CAD systems, or, literally, to the kitchen counter where they experimented with recipes. Sometimes it meant collaborating with a chef to help them think outside the box about menu options. That’s exactly how the Superfood Side Salad (with broccolini and kale) was developed.
Principal results of innovation in Hatch and the Kitchen included processes and equipment to improve food preparation in the restaurants. Chick-fil-A restaurants serve considerably more food every day than other fast-food restaurants, and the equipment must stand up to that volume. And they have to be fast and safe. Truett knew that from the start, when he cut the bone out of the chicken breast and then cooked it in a pressure fryer. He didn’t, however, envision the hand preparation of biscuits for breakfast at Chick-fil-A. An example of innovation to simplify processes in the Kitchen: they developed a unique rolling pin that looks like it has biscuit cutters attached so that it can roll across flattened dough and cut twenty biscuits in a single pass.
Customer feedback and innovation in the Kitchen also led to the replacement of our original grilled menu options, introduced in 1989, with an entirely new chargrilled recipe prepared on a custom-designed grill. For nearly twenty-five years, customers had seen the original grilled sandwich as a healthy option, but not a craveable one like the original Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich. Customers gave it good scores but not great scores, and we didn’t want anybody to think they had to sacrifice enjoyment at Chick-fil-A for nutrition. So the innovation team went to work in Hatch and the Kitchen.
The menu team started working on a different marinade recipe, but the big challenge was a grilling capability that would mimic a backyard-quality grill. We couldn’t do fire. We didn’t have gas in the restaurants, and we didn’t want to go down that road. It had to be electric, but we had to figure out a way to mimic the grill marks and the smoked flavor of backyard grilling.
Our engineers, who were part of the food development group in marketing led by Roger Shealy, were looking at the equipment already in the marketplace and talking to those equipment companies about how they might adapt equipment to get the product attributes we wanted. We weren’t getting the flavor and texture we wanted; the existing equipment options were cooking too much of the moisture out of the chicken or the grill marks weren’t what we wanted. They concluded that nothing on the market could deliver the end result we were seeking, so we had to select a company to work with us to design, engineer, and build a custom piece of equipment. Garland Grills designed a grill with cast-iron grates that grilled ten fillets with just the right amount of pressure to sear in the flavor and the moisture, top and bottom.
Keeping the brand relevant through innovation also meant never losing the connection of the future with the past. For example, fresh design elements in many restaurants include a large table made from reclaimed wood for community seating. And over the table hangs a chandelier made by an Atlanta artist using Coca-Cola bottles that have been heated and flattened. Both the table and the chandelier connect to Truett, who set up a front-yard stand to sell Cokes in the 1920s when he was eight years old, and who also had a heart for folks needing a second chance. The tables are made by men working through “A Better Way Ministries” to deal with life-controlling issues such as drug and alcohol addictions.
Innovating Through Organizational Flexibility
We didn’t limit innovation to Hatch, the Kitchen, or the marketing department. In fact, we encouraged everyone throughout the organization, at the home office and in restaurants, to share their ideas. We promoted innovative thinking by encouraging people to move around in the Chick-fil-A organization. The company had an organization chart, but a significant people-development policy evolved that allowed flexibility and opportunities to work in different positions within the company.
Nobody got pigeonholed for a career. A field marketing rep or an IT professional or an advertising expert could do something else. Great thinkers continued to learn and seek new challenges and add value to everything they touched. They were rewarded financially and with fresh, challenging assignments, and they grew.
The company grew as well. We created business generalists who then moved up through the organization and were better able to grasp the totality of the business. They could work on capacity or investment or marketing or store growth, and in a later context, help make better decisions.
As part of this commitment to developing talent outside the scope of their current responsibilities, each executive committee member had a formal mentor relationship with at least two people per year from outside their department. They made business trips together and spent time together regularly over lunch, asking and answering questions in a completely transparent, completely confidential manner. The relationship allowed each to understand the other’s job and perspective on work.
As the staff grew in size, we expanded the program to other officer levels. It was not unusual for people to have outside coaches, but the best executive coach was often somebody already in the organization who was outside their department. The cross-departmental relationships illuminated the brand touchpoints circle from new points of view and triggered innovation.