How An Airline Food Disaster Led To Chick-Fil-A's Start

For some, Chick-fil-A is the gold standard of fast-food chicken — and perhaps fast food in general. The company is well-known for its reputation of hospitable and kind workers (via CNN), its focus on clean, welcoming restaurants, and, of course, its chicken. While all of those things may be true, Chick-fil-A isn't just "my pleasure," chicken nuggets, and waffle fries. Underneath that public image of cows rallying the masses to eat more "chik'n" is a world that is simultaneously outrageous, comedic, heartwarming, and sometimes controversial. 

You may know, for example, that Chick-fil-A has been the target of criticism for its supposed anti-LGBTQ views based on the company's religious background (via Vox). But did you know that Chick-fil-A also has its own unique history behind the pickles that top every chicken sandwich? Or that the company gives away free meals for a year to 100 lucky customers every time a new location opens (via The Chick-fil-A Podcast)? 

What you may find even more interesting than these facts is that an incident with an airline and in-flight meals was the lynchpin to get Chick-fil-A off the ground.

You may have heard the old setup of "What's the deal with airline food?" While you might be hearing this in Jerry Seinfeld's voice, the concept of in-flight meals served aboard flights actually provided the key inspiration to begin Chick-fil-A's history. Although it didn't involve waffle fries, lemonade, or stewardesses saying "my pleasure" as they served hungry passengers, it did involve chicken.

As Chick-fil-A tells us, brothers Ben and S.Truett Cathy opened their first restaurant, the "Dwarf Grill," in Hapeville, Georgia. Yet it wasn't until 1964 that the restaurant started serving its famous chicken sandwich, so it could be argued that it wasn't exactly the very first Chick-fil-A (just yet). It was only after the brothers were approached by Jim and Hall Goode of Atlanta's Goode Brothers Poultry Company that Cathy got involved with the world of chicken, per Mental Floss. 

You see, the Poultry Company had originally been working on making a type of boneless, skinless chicken that would be good to serve on airlines for in-flight meals. The problem was that the chicken wasn't up to the airline's high requirements, leaving the Goode brothers stuck with shipments of boneless chicken they needed to unload. Their request was simple: Could the Dwarf Grille buy this load of boneless chicken filets to serve at their restaurant?

The Cathy brothers agreed, purchasing the whole shipment of chicken — unknowingly laying the groundwork for an immensely successful endeavor. 

Now, when you have a surplus of boneless, skinless chicken filets just sitting in your backroom, you have to work with it. Fortunately, S. Truett Cathy was nothing if not innovative and began setting out to find new ways to add an attractive chicken product to the Dwarf Grill's menu.

It was Cathy's experiments in trying to introduce chicken to the menu that lead to the invention of the chicken sandwich, or at least it's credited to Cathy (via Chick-fil-A). The first sandwich was not too far off from what you get at your local Chick-fil-A today, being a marinated and boneless grilled chicken filet on a bun with pickles. Of course, Chick-fil-A likes to brag that it "invented" the chicken sandwich, especially nowadays with all of these new chicken sandwiches popping up from almost every fast food joint. 

The claim that Chick-fil-A invented the sandwich, however, isn't technically true. Cathy is credited with creating the modern chicken sandwich, sure, but he did it before Chick-fil-A was even formed. It was the founder who made the sandwich and then built up his empire around it, not the company making a groundbreaking culinary invention as marketing would leave you to believe.

But history aside, it's still a pretty famous sandwich, so what does it matter when it was invented?