“ARE WE BOYCOTTING CHICK-FIL-A OVER THIS?” A PODcaster named Joey Mannarino asked his followers on Twitter last May, accusing the fried-chicken chain of pushing what he saw as an offensive political agenda. Of the more than 110,000 people who responded to the poll he'd attached, almost half clicked “Yes, boycott.”
Being shunned is familiar territory for Chick-fil-A. The company has found itself in this spot repeatedly since 2012, when then-CEO Dan Cathy, a vocal Southern Baptist and son of Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy, stepped into the heat of the gay marriage debate—on the “against” side. LGBTQ activists called for a boycott. When news spread that Cathy and his family had donated millions to anti-LGBTQ Christian groups, protesters dug in further.
Last May, though, things were different. Mannarino is a conservative political media strategist who listed his pronouns as “Shut/Up,” and his outrage stemmed from the fact that Chick-fil-A now has a vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion. His supporters had also discovered another red flag on the company website: a policy endorsing “valuing differences,” “ensuring equal access,” and “creating a culture of belonging.”
The language was boilerplate policy echoing federal anti-discrimination laws regarding gender, skin color, religion, age, physical disability, marital status, sexual orientation, and veteran status. That didn't stop these activists from launching their own investigation into Chick-fil-A's charitable donations, unearthing almost a quarter-million dollars that the company had given to Covenant House, the largest privately funded charity for homeless youth in America. Covenant House says it takes an “affirming” view of LGBTQ youth and has even provided “community space” to Drag Queen Story Hour. Conservative voices, from rightwing internet personality Ian Miles Cheong to The Federalist, regretted having to inform readers that their beloved restaurant chain had gone woke.
The result: Chick-fil-A now has the unenviable distinction of being perhaps the only major U.S. brand to be simultaneously boycotted by the left and the right. That is some heavy compression to put on a chicken sandwich—and Chick-fil-A already fries the breast in a commercial-grade pressure cooker.
AN AVERAGE CHICK-FIL-A DOES $8.1 MILLION IN ANNUAL SALES—EIGHT TIMES MORE THAN DUNKIN’, TWO TIMES MORE THAN MCDONALD'S, AND IN FACT MORE THAN EVERY OTHER FASTFOOD FRANCHISE.
Once well-anchored to the South, both geographically and culturally, the Atlanta-based chain that invented the fast-food chicken sandwich was founded in 1967 by Truett, using a business philosophy based on biblical teachings. The company, which agreed to cooperate with this story but declined to make its C-suite executives available for interviews, has grown into a 48-state empire of some 2,800 restaurants known for their top-rate customer service. Chick-fil-A boasts America's longest drivethrough lines, and in recent years it has outearned every fast-food competitor except McDonald's and Starbucks, despite being closed on Sundays in observance of the Lord's Day. Last year's total sales were nearly $19 billion, an 88% increase from just
