Chick-fil-A Opens A Store Every Few Days

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 11, 7:12AM EST · Published Aug 4, 7:38AM EDT

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Chick-fil-A Opens A Store Every Few Days — © ivanastar / Getty Images

Chick-fil-A has posted explosive growth as it has become one of the most popular fast-food chains in America. It now has locations in 46 states. Its recent growth has taken into large cities like New York and modest-sized towns in Texas, Delaware, and Tennessee. And, the stores it has opened recently show it is expanding at a rate of over a store a week.

In less than a month, Chick-fil-A opened stores in seven states. These include Covington, GA, Woodbridge, NJ, two in Seattle, two in Beaverton, OR, Los Angeles, one in Corpus Christi, TX, and one in New York City. New York has a population of 8 million. Covington has a population of 18,000. The store opening pattern does not just include big cities.

In the next two weeks, Chick-fil-A plans to open another five stores which will expand its presence in another five states. These include Frisco, TX, Jacksonville, AL, Franklin, TN, Seaford, DE, and another in New York City. Jacksonville’s population is only about 13,000.

At the end of June, Chick-fil-A had 2,363 locations. Management means to make it one of the largest fast-food chains in American in a brief amount of time. According to Buzzfeed, in the next two years, it will pass Taco Bell, Burger King, and Wendy’s to take third place in America. Questioned about whether it could become so large in a short period of time, a Chick-fil-A executive said, “The trajectory we’re on would support that.”

Chick-fil-A had revenue of $10 billion last year. That makes it much smaller than McDonald’s for now. McDonald’s had about $20 billion in sales last year, but only about half was in the U.S. And, that its number of the U.S. of stores has been flat at about 14,000 for the last five years.

Finally, Chick-fil-A’s public image is the best of all fast-food restaurants. McDonald’s is last, according to a recent American Customer Satisfaction Index. The number included 19 companies. How hard is it to open a Chick-fil-A location? The list of qualifications is much shorter than you would think.

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.