I was thirty years old in the summer of 1980 when our pastor, Dr. Clark Hutchinson, asked me to lead a $2.5 million fundraising program to build a new educational building for our church and school, which our kids attended. I had no problem with the idea of raising money. Not only would it benefit my kids, but the asset would work six days out of the week instead of Sunday only.
I had never led a fundraising campaign, but I clearly knew it would require our own financial commitment. And though I was in my fourth year as director of marketing for Six Flags Over Georgia, I wasn’t making a lot of money. Dianne and I prayed about it, and I agreed to do it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was on the threshold of a major turning point in my life. You see, I didn’t yet understand what real giving was all about.
At the first committee meeting, Clark unpacked Malachi 3:10–12 (NIV):
“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the LORD Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.
Clark made the point: “You need to understand. This is the only place in Scripture where God uses the words test me and the outcome is positive.” And he reminded us that Christ said He came to fulfill the Scriptures, not destroy them.
I did my own study and confirmed this “test me” promise. This was important because there were few things in our marriage on which Dianne and I did not see eye to eye, but the area of giving was one of them. It was not my nature to be a big giver. To put it bluntly, I had pretty tight fists. She had been raised in a home where her father had a giving heart. I had not been raised in a home that tithed. We gave, but not liberally and not systematically. It wasn’t something my parents talked about, so I had little biblical perspective about giving.
Because of my commitment to Clark to lead this campaign, however, I couldn’t do the job with integrity if I didn’t believe and support his message on this biblical principle. This was a faith issue for me, not a money issue.
Totally independent of Dianne, I decided to believe what God said: “Test me on this.” The promise is positive. Dianne and I agreed to tithe, and we set an additional amount apart above the tithe toward the campaign. Then we turned in the commitment card, because campaign leadership needed to be among the first to make a commitment.
We started the campaign within the church, but I did not have peace about our financial commitment. When I lay in bed at night or when I prayed as I drove to work, I had no peace over our decision. Not a good sign! In fact, another number kept coming to mind, and it was more than double the number we had turned in.
My mind was racing . . . there was no way we could afford to give that much. Over and over I calculated my salary and my potential bonus, and the math never worked. It made me break out in a cold sweat.
Finally, one night two weeks after turning in our commitment, we were lying in bed with the lights out, and I knew I had to talk to Dianne about it. “I don’t have any peace about this commitment we turned in,” I said. “I’m feeling really impressed to change it from X to Y.” I figured that I had surprised her, because it was more, not less.
There was a quiet pause, then she laughed. What’s on her mind? She turned on the light and pulled her Bible from the bedside table. She opened it to Psalm 81:10: “Open your mouth wide and see if I won’t fill it” (TLB). Next to the verse she had written a number, a weekly amount that, when multiplied by fifty-two weeks and three years (the campaign time frame) was within hundreds of the number God had given me. We both laughed, and cried, and turned off the lights.
The next Sunday we changed the pledge to that amount, and finally I was at peace. But I still wasn’t sure how we would make it work financially. Yet I soon learned that was the point: we wouldn’t. I didn’t know it yet, but God had used Clark and Malachi to change my life.
A Thorough Hiring Process at Chick-fil-A
Two days later I got an unexpected call from Jimmy Collins, Chick-fil-A’s chief operating officer. He started the conversation with, “As you may know, we don’t have a marketing department at Chick-fil-A.”
And I was thinking, Oh, I knew that. If you had a marketing department, you would have done that in-park deal with me!
“We have a couple of people trying to do marketing,” he continued, “but they really don’t have a marketing background. We just don’t have what Operators need to help them build their sales. And our same-store sales are slowing down.”
He never used the word brand. It was a matter of resourcing Operators to build sales. Simple enough, right?
He continued, “Would you have any interest in talking to us? I know you’ve got a great job and probably love what you do.”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s correct.” But I was thinking, I would absolutely love to talk to you. Because at that point I had eight years of professional experience with Texas Instruments and Six Flags. I had seen the short-term, transactional focus at TI that undermined the building of a brand around handheld technology (and we see who dominates that market forty years later). And for four years I had watched Six Flags grow, but it was now led by a holding company emerging from bankruptcy, a company that was all about cash. The pressure for quarterly cash performance pinched our capital improvements in the park. Our marketing budget was not growing. We were “milking” the brand, not improving the guest experience and thus the brand.
All the while, I was also thinking back to my pastor’s message and wondering, What’s going on here? Is God in this? I hadn’t talked to these folks at Chick-fil-A in over a year and a half. Why was Jimmy calling me now?
“Yes,” I said again. “I would be interested in talking with you.”
So we made arrangements, and I started the interview process assuming that after a couple of weeks we would know one way or the other. After all, I had interviewed with and gotten my first Six Flags job with one day of interviews.
Wrong! Five and a half months later, I had spent time with Truett, Jimmy, Dan Cathy, Bubba Cathy, the HR director, the operations director, and anybody who was anybody in the home office, plus a couple of Operators.
The breakneck development of shopping malls across the country was opening huge opportunities for Chick-fil-A to grow with them. Over a two-year period in 1980 and 1981, the chain would add more than one hundred locations, doubling the number of restaurants. The growth rate made Truett more than a bit uncomfortable, but now was the time to put a stake in the ground in these new malls or lose them.
“I don’t know how they’ve been researching me,” I told Dianne, “but they’re sure thorough.” I began to fear that Spurge would find out and tell me, “You know what? If you don’t like your job here . . .”
Finally in December 1980, I was having lunch with Truett in his office. They still hadn’t made an offer. We were about an hour into the conversation, and I said, “Truett, I really think you’ve got the makings of a great brand here.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
My eye was drawn to the Bible verse he had on a plaque on his desk: “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, loving favor rather than silver and gold” (Proverbs 22:1 NKJV).
“It’s like the verse there,” I said. “A great brand is a great reputation.”
Then I said, “We’ve been talking a long time and I’m a little concerned. I’m doing this all stealth and it’s starting to get uncomfortable. Truett, what are you looking for in the ideal marketing candidate? And, am I the guy?”
He put his sandwich down and said, “I have absolutely no idea. All I know is that whatever it is, I don’t want to do it.” He wasn’t smiling. He was dead serious. I was shocked. Then he said, “But this is what I do know: I want to know that you and I can work together until one of us dies. And I intend to outlive you.” This time he was smiling. But clearly, he was not looking at this as a short-term decision. (This conversation would become huge in helping me to understand what Chick-fil-A was really about.)
“And I want to know we can trust each other and have fun together, but I’ll trust Jimmy and the others to figure out if you can do the work. If they think you can do the work, then you may very well be the right candidate. But I’m not prepared to tell you that today.
“The most important decision we make here,” he continued, “is who we invite to join the business. Because if you join Chick-fil-A, my goal and expectation is you will never leave here. I’ll have another conversation with Jimmy, and we’ll let you know, but that’s what I’m looking for.”
Maybe you’ve had an interview like that, but not me. I didn’t know what to say.
Every other interview I had ever participated in was predominantly about competency and skill set. I had never seen someone so preoccupied with who I was in terms of character and personal chemistry. In effect, he said he was more interested in who I was than what I could do. And suggesting this would be the only place I would work? Are you kidding me? I’d already had four jobs since grad school.
And yet, I liked everything I had seen about this company: private ownership, the values, Truett’s entrepreneurial spirit, the menu. I loved the sandwich, but I wasn’t drawn to a career change because of a piece of chicken between two pieces of white bread. I was drawn to this man, the Operator deal he had created, and the chain’s unique niche in the malls. Most of all, I liked the idea of coming in on the ground floor. I wouldn’t inherit somebody else’s marketing plan or organization.
This was the day of the “Uncola” 7UP campaign. I told Dianne, “This is the unburger, and it could be something big.” That’s what kept my interest in the months-long conversation with Truett when I already had one of the greatest jobs in Atlanta.
“Okay,” I told him, “so what’s the next step?”
“I’ll consult with Jimmy and any others he wants to involve, and we’ll decide whether you’re the guy or not,” he said. “I would think within two or three weeks we’ll be able to give you an answer.”
My heart sank. “Another two or three weeks . . .”
After months of interviews, I knew my way to the front door. I slowed at Jimmy’s office, and he invited me in and asked how the visit had gone. I gave him a flyby of the conversation, and I asked, “What do you think your timing is?” I was hoping for a better answer than I had heard from Truett. The holidays were coming up, and I was ready to settle this one way or the other.
“That’s about right,” he said. “Probably another couple of weeks. I’ll visit with Truett, and I’m probably going to want to have another sit-down with you.”
Sure enough, the next week Jimmy and his wife, Oleta, invited Dianne and me to dinner at their home. (This session may have been more about getting to know the lady at the side of Steve Robinson.) Toward the end of the evening, I asked Jimmy the same question. I said, “Okay. Am I the guy or not?”
Jimmy was forthright. He said, “I think everybody’s getting pretty excited about your candidacy, but I do need to have one last conversation with Truett before we fully commit and I think of giving you an offer.”
Finally, a few days later he called me at my office with an offer, and he invited Dianne and me to the Chick-fil-A staff Christmas party at Bubba Cathy’s home. I hurried home and told Dianne they had doubled our income, and we laughed and cried together. A good cry.
The next day I met with Spurgeon Richardson, with whom I had worked up close and personal at Six Flags. He knew what I valued, starting with my Christian faith, and I greatly valued his influence on my life.
I said, “Spurge, this is really hard, but I’ve decided to make a change of direction in my career and leave Six Flags. It’s an Atlanta company, privately owned, and it’s a great values fit for me.”
He interrupted me at that point and said, “Chick-fil-A.”
“Well, yeah,” I said, “but I thought I’d kept it a secret. How did you find out?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “But it makes complete sense. You think like they think. What’s important to them is important to you and vice versa.”
Then he graciously complimented me on my work at Six Flags and said, “But you need to do that. Go for it.”
I wasn’t starting at Chick-fil-A until January 12, after I led Six Flags through the final marketing plan development and my replacement had transitioned into my position. In the meantime, Dianne and I went to the Christmas party at Bubba’s house. We arrived a little late, and when we got to the front door, we heard them inside singing carols. Not secular Christmas songs, but carols. To say this was a little different from the staff Christmas party at the Crystal Pistol would be an understatement. Dianne and I were about to experience a major culture change.
Later in the evening there were gifts, including one for Dianne and me.
Uncontested Market Space
In 1981, I was unfamiliar with the term “Blue Ocean Strategy,” a marketplace theory whereby a company seeks an uncontested market space (no rough waters from competitors). The book with that title would not be published until twenty-four years later. But it was obvious to me that Truett Cathy had already found an uncontested market space, shopping malls, that allowed Chick-fil-A to grow in size and strength for more than a decade before competitors moved into the same space.
He created the boneless breast of chicken sandwich, which other chains would not attempt to replicate until 1980. (A short-lived copycat “Filet of Chicken” appeared on some restaurant menus as “Chick-fil-A,” leading Truett and Jimmy to frequently ask their lawyer to send cease and desist letters.) He also introduced fast-food dining to the shopping mall more than ten years before food courts became a staple part of mall architecture.
On my first day at Chick-fil-A on January 12, 1981, I walked into a carefully curated product culture: in essence, build mall stores, and produce and sell a lot of delicious sandwiches. The chain had been in business for more than a dozen years and had opened 184 stores, and the brand was still known predominately for their unique and high-quality chicken sandwich. Annual sales were a bit more than $100 million. The menu remained almost identical to the first one created in 1967, with the Chick-fil-A sandwich, potato shoestring fries, coleslaw, lemon pie, Coca-Cola products, and fresh-squeezed lemonade. No one had stepped up to challenge them in the marketplace, so they kept their heads down and continued doing what they did best.
The culture of the business and even the way customers talked about Chick-fil-A was sandwich-centric, since the sandwich was easy for customers to buy and carry as they walked around the mall. So the primary focus was selling more sandwiches.
Jimmy Collins was an operational fanatic, and I mean that in the most positive terms. He was all about figuring out how to make the Chick-fil-A restaurant concept a consistent, repeatable operation—every store looking the same, producing the same food, and offering the same level of service, with every Operator doing it Chick-fil-A’s way.
“It doesn’t cost any more to make a perfect chicken sandwich,” he often said, and he expected the same across the entire menu.
He was administratively strong, and he understood the importance of systems, processes, and standards. Interestingly, though, he was not big on rules. He developed procedures to ensure that operations remained consistent but allowed individual Operators flexibility to exercise personal judgment, particularly around their teams and sales building.
That was the power of the Operator agreement, which attracted top-notch entrepreneurial talent. Truett and Jimmy trusted the Operators to make the right decisions day to day.
My $2 Million Mistake
Shortly after I arrived for my first day at Chick-fil-A, Jimmy invited me to the Monday morning devotional, which was optional but really confirmed I was in a different kind of work environment. My office was in a small, windowless trailer connected to the back of the steel office building on Virginia Avenue in Hapeville. As I unpacked, I heard a rooster crow and thought, Is this a joke? I’d gone from screams and rumbling roller coasters outside my office to chicken sandwiches and a neighborhood rooster. Nobody suggested the rooster was anything unusual, just a neighbor with chickens.
Jimmy took me downtown to meet with the ad agency. “They’re going to present their ideas for future campaigns,” he said.
McCann Erickson was the agency, the same company I had worked with at Six Flags, though a different team. And on the Chick-fil-A side, it was Jimmy and the two folks he had mentioned when he first called me. Wonderful, gracious people, but neither had advertising or marketing experience. And when it came to marketing a mall-based fast-food restaurant chain, I didn’t know anything either, which I would soon discover.
The agency rep presented several freestanding newspaper inserts with coupons, the same kind of things I had seen from similar chains, and it looked fine to me. They were designed to drive customers to Chick-fil-A. Isn’t that what fast-food brands do?
At the same meeting, Dr. Ken Bernhardt from the business school at Georgia State University presented some of the first customer research Chick-fil-A had ever commissioned, research that gave new insight as to how the brand was known and perceived. I took that presentation back to the office and spent most of my first week studying it. It was my first experience with the voice of the Chick-fil-A customer. And unknowingly, I had just met a lifelong friend and professional associate in Ken.
From his findings, I learned that Chick-fil-A, in fact, was not a destination. After all, we were in malls exclusively. Our market was walking past our stores every day. The data showed that more than 75 percent of the people who ate in the mall didn’t make the decision to eat until they were in the mall, and unaided awareness of Chick-fil-A was in the single digits. Ours was a captive audience environment, and we had to figure out how to tap into people who were already in that environment—to give them compelling reasons to walk over to our storefront. This insight should have been a “red flag” for me, but the implications did not immediately hit me.
Chick-fil-A had a history of dropping coupons into newspapers by the hundreds of thousands, as if we were a destination. Existing customers showed up with them clutched in their hands. Couponing did allow us to introduce our products, generate some awareness, and create short-term increased sales. But at what price? Our customers and Chick-fil-A were becoming hooked on coupons. Like so many other fast-food restaurants with buy-one-get-one offers and discounted “dollar meals,” Chick-fil-A had begun to rely on the instant fix.
I learned in that first meeting that our agency was developing a future campaign called “First ’n’ Best.” In 1980, McDonald’s had introduced the McChicken sandwich, and though its sales were so disappointing it disappeared from their stores for several years, fast foods megabrand had awoken and other burger chains were now trying to get into the chicken sandwich business. McCann’s solution was to tell the world that the Chick-fil-A Sandwich was not only the original, but it also tasted much better.
We did not have a line item for chain-wide advertising in the corporate budget. Rather, restaurant Operators committed in their franchise agreement to invest up to 3.25 percent of their gross sales to pay for advertising that the home office placed, including the food and paper cost of any offers.
In late 1981, McCann presented creative for a beautiful multipage, four-color “First ’n’ Best” newspaper insert with coupons. Jimmy and I liked it, and I suggested, “If we’re going to do this, let’s go big.” I suggested we enhance the offers and media plan. The agency had suggested direct mail. The piece was so good, I suggested that we dramatically increase the exposure by dropping a version into select newspapers.
The piece hit the market, and almost instantly customers showed up in restaurants. Way too many customers. The Atlanta newspapers alone had a combined circulation of nearly half a million, and based on previous redemption percentages in all our markets, we thought we would be okay on our 3.25 percent budget.
Almost overnight sales spiked uncontrollably. Food production challenges soared. We had offered free slices of lemon pie, which like everything on the menu, was made by hand. Our poor kitchen staff was overwhelmed! And that was only one of many offers.
The restaurants quickly reached the budget cap for costs, but customers were still showing up with coupons for more free food. By the time the offers expired and the dust settled, the chain had given away $2 million worth of food over and above the restaurants’ 3.25 percent budget commitment. That unbudgeted $2 million hit the corporate P&L like a sack of bricks, and my name was mud. And in my first year! I wondered if I’d even make it to year two.
My recommendations had lost the equivalent of almost 2 percent of that year’s gross sales. I had been too aggressive about things I didn’t fully understand.
The kitchen staffs, the Operators, and our accountants were all angry. Two weeks into the campaign, I went to Jimmy and apologized. “If I’d known what I know now, I wouldn’t have made those recommendations,” I said. “I was too aggressive with insufficient knowledge.”
He was incredibly gracious. He said, “You don’t have to apologize. I was a part of the decision too. We just invested $2 million in your education. You’ll never make that mistake again.”
I know Truett must have been as upset as anybody. He had committed $10 million to build a new home office, and borrowing that much money was already weighing heavily on him. My recommendations had added another $2 million to the load. But he never said anything to me. His body language wasn’t good, but he never confronted me about it. I suspect Jimmy counseled him, “Extend some grace to Steve on this because I was there and I approved it too.” Both men were models of patient leadership and grace.
And Jimmy was right. I would never make that mistake again. If I had anything to do with it, Chick-fil-A was getting out of the coupon business. Between the “First ’n’ Best” experience and the mall customer research insights, that was one fast-food paradigm I didn’t want associated with Chick-fil-A ever again!
My “education” process had begun dramatically and expensively, and the lessons were clear:
• Coupons and discounts undermine the value of the brand. They scream, “Our products are not worth full price.”
• Coupons are a crapshoot. You can’t control the outcome, pace, or quantity of results.
• Maybe worst of all, coupons made Chick-fil-A look like all the other fast-food brands. Not good.
In the heat of the disastrous results, it was easy to say, “No more coupons!” But when we made that strategic commitment in a fast-food business that was surrounded by a paradigm of couponing and deals, we created a huge new challenge.
Our entire Operator family had grown to rely on coupons. The home office had built its advertising around coupons. And now this young guy who just about killed the kitchen staffs with one of his first campaigns, which used coupons, is saying, “No more coupons”?
In my mind, I ran imagined conversations over and over.
“What’s that all about?” the Operator demands. “I’ve got to grow my sales.”
“Well, you’ve got to get your sales up another way,” I say.
“And what is that other way, Mr. Director of Marketing?”
“I don’t know.”
We needed a viable, long-term strategic option quickly. We had to come to the table with ideas, programs, and creative support to build sales another way.
At Six Flags, generating new business had been the responsibility of the marketing department. What were we going to do to drive attendance? So I brought that attitude to Chick-fil-A. Quickly, however, I learned that my new job was different—it was to equip the Operators with the tools to generate new business. Sales was not my responsibility; it was theirs. If we hadn’t gone through the coupon crisis, I might have worked for years before coming to that realization. That event was a shock treatment.
Operators are the marketing agents of the Chick-fil-A brand. They will naturally control the ebb and flow of a marketing investment to maximize the realities of their growth and income goals. Our job as a marketing group was to equip them to grow the business—both the profits and the brand—as fast as they wanted to grow it in a healthy way.
Our strategic option was standing in front of us. Truett Cathy had built his business at the Dwarf House through personal relationships with customers, not coupons. His experience would become our model for growing Chick-fil-A.
The “First ’n’ Best” coupon disaster led us to determine we would not be a transaction-chasing brand. We would build Chick-fil-A through personal relationships. We didn’t know fully how that would look or what tools we might offer, but we knew there was no personal relationship in a coupon. A customer found it in the newspaper or the mailbox, cut it out, and traded it in for food. And in the process, Chick-fil-A looked like any other fast-food brand.
But we knew that Chick-fil-A was not just another fast-food brand. We needed to figure out how to market it so that reality came through loud and clear. The journey would take us to a new Blue Ocean–style uncontested market space.
Selecting a Staff
We needed to build a marketing staff, beginning with somebody to join me in the field to listen to Operators and learn the business from their side. I had a clear idea where to start. David Salyers had worked at Six Flags the summer after he graduated from high school, running the Dahlonega Mine Train. Then for three summers while he attended the University of Georgia, he worked as our public relations intern. David helped with publicity events, press tours, and concerts.
Although I knew David well, I still did not want to hire him without engaging in the appropriate process. As Truett had told me, the most important decision you make is who to invite into the business. He was relying on me to make wise hiring choices, and he was also very active in the process. For years he had interviewed every Operator candidate and every staff candidate because as far as he was concerned, if you were going to become a part of Chick-fil-A, you would never go anywhere else. So every selection needed to be a wise one. He and Jimmy had spent more than five months interviewing me before making an offer, and through that process I came to understand that they were looking for competency, character, and chemistry in the people. Throughout my Chick-fil-A career, I would attempt to apply those criteria.
First, competency. I learned to be less concerned about the specific skill set that somebody brought to the table. Instead, I evaluated whether they had the ability and desire to be a learner. At Chick-fil-A, as at most growing organizations, we wanted people who could do more than one or two things. We wanted them to demonstrate the ability to learn new skills through their personal entrepreneurship, as well as show a willingness to take on new challenges and opportunities.
People ask, “Do grades matter?” Yes, they matter because grades demonstrate to some degree whether the person is a good learner. Have they demonstrated a listening, learning attitude? My first test was not just the skill set a person had, but his or her history of learning, at school and in other jobs.
Second, character. Would this person thrive in the Chick-fil-A culture? Was there such personal alignment with the Corporate Purpose and the underlying values that they would thrive in that environment? Also, would I want my children working for this person? If the answers were yes, then the person was probably a viable candidate.
Third, chemistry. Had this person demonstrated—and could I see this person generating—followership completely independent of title? This person should be able to cast vision as well as demonstrate great listening and great processing on his or her feet. And because this person was a great listener and had intellectual capacity, then when she did open her mouth (or he opened his), this person added value to the project or the conversation. People would naturally gravitate to this person, no matter what his or her title might be.
David Salyers fit every category. And as it turned out, he knew more about Chick-fil-A than I had imagined. When Truett was speaking to students at the University of Georgia, the two of them had met. Truett was so impressed, he invited David to the Chick-fil-A Operator Seminar—my first seminar. In fact, to my surprise, I checked him in at our registration table. Truett and I both recruited him, and David agreed to come aboard.
Right away, we dove into Ken Bernhardt’s research and made numerous store visits. It was clear that the mall was not just a place to do business. The mall was our primary medium. Not coupons. Not paid media. And because we were paying high-priced rent to be in the mall, we had to make it work for us. Up to that point, the only tools Operators had were Be Our Guest cards and standing out on the lease line sampling chicken on toothpicks. Those were powerful tools—good food and personal connections.
David and I traveled from store to store, mall to mall, discovering what Operators needed to build their business. We weren’t thinking of building a brand then. We were just building business, building sales profitably.
The best Operators were already figuring out how to use their lease line and the mall environment to gain product trial and awareness. So we built the initial mall-based marketing plan literally from the menu board out, redesigning it to work harder from farther away. We designed new point-of-sale materials to work on the store counters and at the lease line. We designed materials to help support sampling chicken, lemonade, and lemon pie. We created cross promotions with other mall tenants to take advantage of their customer bases, and we designed in-mall billboards.
During those restaurant visits we discovered the power of the Operator concept by simply getting to know them. They weren’t managers. They were legitimate business entrepreneur leaders. They were smart, and they had opinions of their own. They weren’t punching the clock forty hours a week. They were doing whatever it took to grow the business profitably and take care of the customer. And they weren’t afraid to tell us what we were doing well or what we were not doing well to support them. They respected the partnership with Chick-fil-A, but they had no problem leaning into our responsibility to help them grow their business.
Some of our most important product introductions originated with Operators. In 1982, Dr. Bill Baran joined Chick-fil-A as our nutrition and new product expert. Like David and me, he spent part of his time visiting Operators. Returning from a trip to Richmond and Virginia Beach, he told us that an Operator up there (Red Witten) had seen parents taking chicken out of the bun and cutting it into smaller pieces for their children. Red began experimenting, slicing smaller pieces before cooking, and even had a local metal shop create a basket specifically designed to fry these “nuggets.”
Bill said kids as well as adults were begging for the product, and he believed we might have a winner. He contacted our chicken suppliers and asked them to develop a technique for cutting breast meat into half-ounce pieces, and he asked our equipment manufacturers to create the right cooking basket. Soon we had several restaurants running trials on “Chick-fil-A Nuggets,” using the same recipe as the sandwich. Customers loved them.
At the same time, our team had developed a recipe using a pressure cooker for chicken noodle soup made from scratch in restaurants. Once again, we ran in-store trials, and we were confident that both products, which we planned to introduce in 1983, would succeed.