Chick-fil-A

Chick-fil-A pressure-cooks a boneless breast of chicken in more than three thousand US restaurants across 48 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. The chain opened as a 24-hour hamburger diner, and the sandwich it is named for arrived fifteen years later. Chicken leads the board because of that, and the doors stay shut every Sunday.

Chick-fil-A history, the company that grew out of it, and the shape of the US estate today fill the section below.

Chick-fil-A History

Truett Cathy opened the Dwarf Grill in Hapeville, Georgia, in 1946, a round-the-clock diner beside the Ford assembly plant. Shift workers from that plant filled it. Hamburgers and short-order breakfasts ran the first board, with chicken nowhere on it. The sandwich arrived in 1961 out of a piece of equipment rather than a recipe. Cathy had found that a pressure fryer cooked a boneless breast in about the time a griddle needed for a hamburger.

Chick-fil-A, Inc. followed as a Georgia corporation in 1964, three years before any restaurant carried the name. Greenbriar Mall in southwest Atlanta took the first restaurant in 1967. Mall food courts stayed the format for nearly two decades, and the first free-standing restaurant did not open until 1986. Closing on Sunday goes back to that first week in Hapeville, and the practice has never lapsed. Every US restaurant still shuts on Sunday, on Thanksgiving and at Christmas.

Ownership has stayed inside one family throughout, and the company remains private today. Andrew Truett Cathy became its third chief executive in 2021, the grandson of the founder. Operators commit a fixed ten thousand dollars and run a single restaurant that the company builds, owns and equips. Almost none of them hold more than one. The chain closed 2025 with 2,863 US restaurants and 23.9 billion dollars in systemwide sales, on the highest average unit volume of any major chain.

Chick-fil-A Menus & Details

Four pages carry the detail behind the counter. Each one puts an item name and the figures that belong to it on the same row.

The full board, section by section, with a price and a calorie figure beside every item.

Off-menu builds, the wording to use at the counter, and the menu item each one is charged as.

The seasonal lineup, the day it landed, and what each item costs.

Milk, egg, soy, wheat and sesame named against each item, with the calorie count beside it.