Well the corporation doesn’t give to ex-gay organizations anymore. Any boycott to be successful, IMO, has to have a defined end point. When the corporation stopped giving to those groups, that was my end point. I thanked them for doing so and started eating there again.
IMO they have the best of the fast food chicken sandwiches.
Hey, at least he isn’t spilling it in the dust, right?
As others have noted, I don’t care for the pickle flavor, so I don’t eat there.
We’ve also run into issues on road trips when we try to stop (the hubby likes them) on Sundays and they aren’t open.
Fair enough. I’m not organizing boycotts, but I’m still leery of eating there.
Never been, but we like their billboards.
As a transplant to Southern California, I wonder the same thing about In-n-Out.
In-N-Out tends to have the same attraction. My local In-N-Out routinely has a 20 minute wait for drive-thru, and whenever a new one opens you always see stories of people waiting in line for hours for it.
The one near my work is usually around 50-60% capacity during late lunch (~1:30pm) which seems to be pretty good – it’s more than the local McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Arby’s, Panda Express or Jimmy John’s. They have as many tables as your average fast food chain burger joint, by way of comparison (JJ and PE have less seating).
So they do pickles but NOT mayo on a standard sandwich? That would only work for me if the grease was deep enough to saturate the bottom half of the roll. Otherwise what good is a chicken sandwich without mayonnaise?
I don’t obtain meals from fast food places, or patronize homophobic corporations, but I could be tempted to try their chicken sandwich. Fried chicken is a periodic indulgence…I tried Harold’s in Chicago not too long ago. And I doubt that Chicken Fil A crucifies a gay person for every million sold.
Well the chicken sandwiches *are *pretty good. But yeah - from a sheer culinary standpoint, it would be odd to see long lines. Might be political reasons.
Well, the bun is buttered and toasted, so there’s that.
Here’s a nice run-down of a Chick-Fil-A sandwich courtesy of our friends from Serious Eats (versus McDonald’s long-gone Southern Style chicken sandwich, which was exactly the same idea and also, IMHO, pretty good.)
ETA: And, while I’m here, might as well also share another one of their articles about recreating it at home and the accompanying recipe.
I mean, it’s a fast food joint, it will always have massive supporters. They sell ice cream and other stuff that the people love, they make business, it’s just how things are. You not seeing the appeal in something doesn’t matter. It sells, so what?
Chick Fil A once had a thing where they were against gays and it was pretty popular, and people boycotted them, and people supported them (those against gays of course). No publicity is bad publicity, because Chick Fil A sold more than ever when that happened.
Just accept that people buy stuff they don’t really need or care for and move on. Some Buddhists don’t eat eggs because they don’t want to have pleasure, some people buy doggy sweaters so they can take cute pictures of their dogs and put them on facebook. People have decisions that might not make sense to everyone, and you can’t really help that.
Perception and market psychology may get people to walk through the doors but it’s not going to get them to come back. As much as I hate the Olive Garden, there are plenty of people who genuinely like it and keep coming back for more. Chik-fil-A has been in business since 1967. They’ve managed to stay in business because they make a product that people continue to buy. It might not be a product that’s to your taste like Olive Garden isn’t to mine. But it’s a product that a lot of people want.
So what’s the attraction of Chick-fil-A?
#1. The food is pretty tasty. I love their chicken sandwiches and their nuggets. I’m not so keen on their spicy chicken but even that isn’t too bad.
#2. The food is reasonably priced. For a little over $7.00 I’m getting a chicken sandwich, large fries, and a large drink. That makes them competitively priced with most other fast food restaurants.
#3. The staff is unfailingly polite and competent. I’ve certainly seen good employees at other fast food establishments but never so consistently good as I do at Chick-fil-A. They’re polite, they rarely make a mistake with my order, and they keep the place clean.
Too spicy for me.
Of the major chain restaurants that I patronize, I think their milkshakes are easily the best.
The In-N-Out closest to my home has a Honeybaked Ham store right across the street. Never a line, and they have some EXCELLENT sandwiches there. I don’t mind that I have to get out of the car to get it.
As for CFA, my first experience with them was at the Sooner Mall in Norman, OK in 2008. They were running a special on peach milkshakes. Pure ambrosia! Tried a sandwich a few months later. It was okay.
Before the debacle with contaminated ice cream, they used Blue Bell here, and they were heaven. Braums’ is the only thing close to it.
As to the sammiches, I’m of the persuasion that thinks their secret is that they are simple, and done well. After I take the pickles off, the vinegar taste left on the buttered bun is the perfect dressing for the chicken. It’s secret to success is that they can prepare them beforehand, and they don’t really deteriorate even if it’s a couple of hours old. If you dressed it with mayo, or really anything, it’d destroy the bun or the crust in short order if it was kept warm. I’ve been addicted for more than four decades, and no amount of stupid politics on the part of the owners, or my insane craving to have one EVERY FUCKING SUNDAY*, will convince me to stop eating them.
I was thinking I was hallucinating when they opened standalone stores, and I could get one without having to go to the mall. Now, if I want a perfect chicken sammich and delicious waffle fries during the lunch or dinner rush, going to the mall almost seems appealing in comparison to sitting in their congested drive-thru lines.
*Yes, tell me I can’t have something, and I want nothing else.
I’ve never really taken any mainstream/fast food thing seriously when they say it has habanero or “ghost pepper” spice in it. Even your “garden variety” habanero is so hot that if they included any significant amount of it in their food it’d be inedible to a huge swath of the population. I usually interpret something like a Wendy’s “Ghost Pepper Chicken Sandwich” as “we show the sandwich a picture of a ghost pepper before we serve it to you.”