Published on 17 July 2014 by Malaysian Digest.
It’s the fast food chicken chain that most consumers outside the US have never heard of. But inside America, the wild popularity of family-owned chain Chick-fil-A has been identified as a threat to major fast food behemoths like McDonald’s and has even surpassed chicken giant KFC.
The title of a recently released market report for McDonald’s says it all: Chick-fil-A a Serious and Growing Competitive Threat.
Written by financial services firm Janney, the report notes that the privately owned company held a 26 per cent market share of the fast food chicken industry in 2013 — up from nine per cent in 1999.
For comparison, in 1999, Yum! brand’s KFC enjoyed a comfortable lead with a 40 per cent share of the market. Today, that’s down to 22 per cent, several percentage points below Chick-fil-A and enough to make the Colonel turn in his grave.
The recently released results of Consumer Reports' annual fast food ranking corroborates the popularity of Chick-fil-A, as respondents gave the brand top billing in the category of chicken sandwiches.
KFC landed at the bottom of the heap, after other chains like Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Zaxby’s and Church’s Chicken. Chick-fil-A found success carving out a niche market selling deep-fried chicken sandwiches, nuggets and wraps since 1946.
The brand's success is all the more impressive given that KFC possesses more than double the number of outlets as its counterpart. While Chick-fil-A has 1,790 restaurants in 39 states and Washington DC, KFC has 4,500 outposts across the country.
Furthermore, all Chick-fil-A restaurants close system-wide close on Sundays — or “Lord’s Day” — as part of founder S. Truett Cathy’s religious beliefs.
Meanwhile, the Janney report issues some stern warnings to fast food giant McDonald’s, which also offers a slew of chicken-based items on its menu. While the chain is described as a relatively “small fry” compared to worldwide sales at McDonald’s, the report notes that KFC didn’t see Chick-fil-A's success coming a decade ago either.
In 2013, McDonald’s generated US$36 billion (RM115b) in systemwide sales, versus US$5 billion at Chick-fil-A. “While Chick-fil-A remains meaningfully smaller than McDonald’s US today, to the extent it could be ignored as a competitive threat ten years ago, we would argue that it can no longer be ignored as a long-term competitive threat today,” analysts write.
1. McDonald's
2. Subway
3. Starbucks
4. Wendy's
5. Burger King
6.Taco Bell
7. Dunkin' Donuts
8. Pizza Hut
9. Chick-fil-A
10. Applebee's
- AFP-Relaxnews
Link: http://www.malaysiandigest.com/features/509503-chick-fil-a-surpasses-kfc-as-dominant-us-fast-food-chicken-chain.html
The members of the Cathy family have never made a secret of their religious faith. What they haven’t talked about nearly as much is the political implications of that faith. That changed on June 16, when Dan Cathy, having grown up from dwarf performer to Chick-fil-A’s president, went on a syndicated radio show and said, “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.’” Two weeks later an interview with Cathy was published in a North Carolina Baptist newsweekly called the Biblical Recorder. In it, he said his company was “very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit.” For the younger Cathy, just as for the majority of the delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention, the biblical definition of the family unit meant one thing: a man, a woman, and their children. When Southern Baptist publications use the words “same-sex marriage” and “gay marriage,” they bracket them in quotes.
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The fast food restaurant of a thousand lands is the work of Erik DeVriendt, the owner/operator of this Chick-fil-A since June 2011. Since moving to Richmond in 2006, DeVriendt has wielded his vocational skills to address the needs of Richmond's refugee population: namely, steady and life-giving employment. Including Jirom, DeVriendt has employed some 13 refugees for his 67-employee team, often receiving referrals from Commonwealth Catholic Charities, the local resettlement agency. The agency helps with paperwork and training, but DeVriendt is not incented financially for hiring refugees. He simply wanted to "help them in the most tangible way possible, so we stepped up to the plate and took a swing."
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