The Homa Files

And, Chick-fil-A is leapfrogging rivals.

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Last week, we posted that Costco – which sells almost 1 million chickens each day –  is opening its own mega chicken farm to partially satisfy its needs.

See How many chickens does Costco buy & sell each year?

A beneficiary of the trend – or, make that “the driving force” behind it – is Chick-fil-A .

I thought the long lines were a local phenomenon, but data indicates that it’s a national occurrence.

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Restaurant Business reports:

Fast-food chains, as a group continue to grow revenues about 2% annually … while step-up casual and fine dining chains’ traffic is declining at a rate of of about 5% … “a long-term trend that appears to have accelerated in recent years.

“Some fast food operators are really  knocking it out of the park … for instance, Chick-fil-A  continues to surge.

In 2017, Chick-fil-A’s U.S. systemwide sales were $9.021 billion, up 14.2%.

So far this year, Chick-fil-A sales are up 15.5%,traffic is up 10% and sales will be over $10 billion.

That should move Chick-fil-A ahead of of Wendy’s, Burger King and Taco Bell … into the #3 slot … trailing only McDonald’s and Subway.

Since Subway is on a downward trend … with traffic declining about 5% annually for the past 5 years … a Chick-fil-A move into the #2 slot seems inevitable.

The #1 slot is probably out of reach since McDonald’s does almost 4 times the sales as Chick-fil-A.

But, an average Chick-fil-A store does about twice the volume of an average McDonald’s … and some markets are barely penetrated.

For example, “as of March 2018 Chick-fil-A only had 11 restaurants in New York, a state with more than 19 million residents.”

An offset: some of the underpenetrated markets are in liberal enclaves that philosophically oppose Chick-fil-A’s Christian leanings … and cringe at the company’s “cult like” obsession with cheerful customer service.

My bet: Eventually those people will be won over by damn good chicken  … and free refills offered without making you feel like a criminal of sorts.

Of course, they’d gripe that the stores aren’t opened on Sundays.

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This entry was posted on December 19, 2018 at 6:53 am and is filed under Food & Drink, Restaurants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.