Chick-fil-A is a Cult, a no, just playing! We are however, The Chicken family.
I had the honor of knowing Truett Cathy, I bought him once at an auction.
I remember hearing an amazing story about him. It was in the early 80s, and several of the executive committee was around the table with him. They were discussing expansion and it was slow going. The conversation went back and forth about possibly getting a loan to expand. As the story goes, it went on for quite a while until Truett slammed his hand on the table and said, “Lets focus on getting better, and then we will get bigger!” That’s exactly what they did. They set their budgets, and grew. They focused on being the best.
Every part of Chick-fil-A is focused on setting up good opportunities for Chick-fil-A Inc. The operators, and the guests. I rarely heard the corporate office mention one without the other. If we were going to add a new menu item for example, grilled nuggets, it would work for all 3, including a need for gluten free from our guests.
Chick-fil-A has a great philosophy; shoot for perfection, but settle for excellence. Think about that, although it may be a difficult achievement to obtain the results will be substantial.
As I look around, most companies are shooting for above average, and even some are shooting for average. But if you’re shooting for average and you don’t hit it, where will you fall? BELOW average, and there’s plenty of other places out there that are in that situation. Of course some will shoot for above average but when they fall short of that then they end up being just plain average.
At Chick-fil-A, we train our people to look for opportunities to serve others. I once had a customer that was a huge fan of Chick-fil-A, he loves the customer service, and loves the food. His name is Jared and he was going to have a birthday party, and so we asked his friends and his job if we could bring party trays to him to feed him and his entire place of employment. He later came to us and said he wanted to make a video, kind of a love story of him and Chick-fil-A, this “love story “has been seen and heard by over 275,000 people!
We reach for excellence by engaging with our team members who in turn engage in our guests. There are many ways to look at this and create processes to make your staff feel like you are serving them.
- Celebrate monthly birthdays
- Celebrate professional and personal achievements
- Acknowledge and reward those that go “above and beyond” for your guests. Those that provide impactful 2nd mile service. What is 2nd mile service? We will go over that in our final series.
- Mentor your managers. Stay engaged in their service and ask them how you can assist them to achieve their goals or help them in areas of weakness.
- On-going training
How are you and your organization reaching for excellence? Feel free to use the contact form on our website to ask questions or obtain more information on how to reach your own goals for your business. Raise the bar for standards and you will increase traffic!