Chick-fil-A’s Reputation Crumbles

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Chick-fil-A’s Reputation Crumbles

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24/7 Insights

  • Chick-fil-A slipped in the latest Axios Harris company reputation ranking.
  • Has the chicken fast-food chain become “woke”?

Chick-fil-A, the chicken fast-food chain, often scores well on quality surveys. It is usually ranked first in the American Customer Satisfaction Index restaurant rating. However, a new study of corporate reputations found that Chick-fil-A’s rating collapsed.

In the Axios Harris 100 reputation ranking for 2024. Chick-fil-A fell 16 positions to 21st place. That puts it between IBM and PepsiCo.

What happened? A closer look at the Axios data shows that the company got an exceptionally low rating for “citizenship.” Moreover, its reputations for “character” and “trust” fell from their all-time highs in the study.

It is difficult to say if individual incidents are the sole reason for reputation changes. In Chick-fil-A’s case, probably not. Recently, it lost a $4.4 million suit over delivery fees. The anti-LGBTQ controversies that were troubling are old. CNN mentioned about the fast-food company: “It joins a growing list of companies that right-wing media and conservatives on social platforms have chastised for so-called ‘woke’ marketing.”

None of these reasons seems sufficient for Chick-fil-A’s showing. Plus, the Axios Harris poll is fickle. The reputation of Fidelity Investments rose 26 places to the third spot of the 100. Kohl’s fell 21 places to the 66th position.

Suffice it to say, no company wants its reputation to be questioned in public.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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