Culture Project

Chik-fil-A

Company Overview

Chick-fil-A Inc. is a privately held and family owned firm being successful in the business of restaurant chain in the United States. It has become second largest restaurant chain all over in US through its quick service and chicken expertise. It comprises over more than 1615 locations in 39 states and Washington D.C (Craigaronoff, 2011). On an average, Chick-fil-A records annual sales revenue of over $4.1 billion (Company Fact Sheet, 2012). It has been founded by Mr. Cathy in the early 1960s and became the pioneer in its business with the establishment of restaurants in shopping malls. It has opened its first Chick-fil-A restaurant in the year 1967 at a mall in suburban Atlanta.

Chick-fil-A has become a renowned restaurant chain all over US due to its innovations and delicious products which includes the most popular Chick-fil-A® chicken sandwich.

The Company's Culture

The organizational culture at Chick-fil-A is represented by its artifacts, shared assumptions and values, employee's adaptability, company's environmental fit and corporate strength (Cory Bortnicker, 2009). A visit to Chick-fil-A restaurant described the culture in proper details. The facilities that the restaurant provides although being over crowded are pristine. Employees are young, good looking and energetic that welcomes every customer with smiling, quick and polite manner (Goodman, 2009). The food is healthy, hot, tasty and reasonably priced. Menu has been displayed properly but value deals were not available.

The stores are not located at every corner but with in very easy reach. The company operates the franchises by carefully selecting the managers of those branches. The company provides numerous opportunities to the college graduates and it gives very much lower employee turnover although being amongst the high turnover industry (McWhirter and Cameron, 2012). Another big thing that the company shows is its philanthropic acts that have aimed at providing better opportunities and programs for the development of challenged youth and their families.

The entire operations of the company are closed on Sundays and Christian Sabbath (Craigaronoff, 2011). The Cathy family is basically Christian but it is the culture of the company that no religious icons will be seen in the overall restaurant chains. When an employee walks to the customers in the restaurant for refill of drinks no one encourages saying grace before their meals (Craigaronoff, 2011).

The mission of the company says “Be America's quick service restaurant”. It is the basic aim at which the company is running. Cathy's family is running the business whole heartedly with all the best possible practices in order to provide its customers all the very best in chicken and serving them at a greater pace. This is the competitive edge of the company for being the second largest amongst the restaurant chains all over US.

One of the best practices of Chick-fil-A is closing of the stores on Sundays. The reason behind this policy is that, according to Dan Cathy, “if I am unwilling to go to work on Sundays then the others are also humans and they will also be unwilling to work on Sundays” (Company ...