Where’s The Beef?
The Cache Cow
Published: 6/22/22
By: Gordon Dawson
On a recent trip from South Carolina to Alabama, like all over the south, I saw a billboard sign for Chick-fil-A outside Atlanta, GA. At that moment, I exclaimed to my wife and daughter, “have you ever been to the original Chick-fil-A?” They said no, and neither had I. “Look it up! It has something to do with little or dwarf,” I told them. They thought I was out of my mind, but I knew the OG had something to do with these terms. Sure enough, she found “The Dwarf House,” couldn’t believe what she was reading, and exclaimed its distance was not too far from where we were driving.
Next comes the menu. She starts rattling items off: open all night, breakfast any time, hamburgers, steak, cornbread, fried okra, and the list went on. We were starving at this point, and the GPS was rerouted to Hapeville, GA, near the ATL airport. We wanted to ensure it was open and called about reservations and wait times. As it stood, the location we were driving to is the OG, but modifications have occurred over the years. Now, the restaurant stands with the dine-in grill service with waiting tables on one side or sit and eat on the other, like any current Chick-fil-A experience. Obviously, we wanted the full wait experience with the historical menu.
I seriously couldn’t believe I could order a Cheeseburger inside a Chick-fil-A. It made no sense, but it was written closely to another favorite, breakfast - anytime. I’m a sucker for waffles, so my meal consisted of a crispy one with a side of fried okra, bacon, and cornbread. Shannon and Cat shared a Cheeseburger with their signature waffle fries, a ham & cheese melt with Brussel Sprouts, followed by hot apple pie with ice cream for dessert. Aside from the fries, our table was a buffet of anything you currently cannot receive at Chick-fil-A, and it was a mind-blowing experience. We sat there, talked and made friends with the staff, took a hundred pictures, bought merch, and even got a small tour by a few phenomenal staff members. All-in, $132 spent, but well worth the “first-ever” adventure.
This experience made me want to know more about the Dwarf House, its origin, meaning, and why it changed. In the New Georgia Encyclopedia, there’s a small article that refers to Truett Cathy, the founder, as opening a small business in Hapeville, GA, in 1946. Due to its size, Cathy and his brother Ben named it the Dwarf Grill, later to become the Dwarf House. This will become the location that invented and perfected the Chick-fil-A sandwich in 1964. Look closely, and you see the “open all night” part of the sign, but even then, the doors were never open on Sunday.
Truett Cathy: “I was not so committed to financial success that I was willing to abandon my principles and priorities. One of the most visible examples of this is our decision to close on Sunday. Our decision to close on Sunday was our way of honoring God and directing our attention to things that mattered more than our business.”
The invention of the chicken sandwich began as the solution to an interesting problem in the 1960s. A local poultry supplier was tasked by an airline to provide a boneless, skinless chicken breast that would fit in the plastic trays of in-flight meals. The supplier met the challenge but ended up with quite a few chicken breast pieces that didn’t meet the airline’s size requirements. So the supplier asked Cathy if he could use them. Determined not to let the opportunity pass him by, Cathy accepted the order.
Cathy had considered adding chicken to the menu at The Dwarf Grill before, but it took too long to cook for his time-crunched lunch patrons – mostly shift workers at the nearby Ford plant and Delta Airlines. What he needed was a new way to cook it.
Cathy thought back to his mother’s method of cooking chicken, in which she would cover the pan with a heavy top to simulate a pressure cooker. When Cathy tried this in his restaurant, he found that the chicken cooked faster while remaining tender. So he purchased a commercial pressure cooker that could cook a juicy, tender boneless chicken breast from start to finish in just four minutes. The cooker itself is only part of what made Cathy’s chicken unique. Since the beginning, Chick-fil-A’s chicken has been cooked in high-quality peanut oil. Peanut oil is more expensive than other vegetable oils, but Cathy wanted to use only the best ingredients. (Cathy preferred the flavor of peanut oil because it didn’t overpower the taste of the chicken and because it is naturally free of trans fats and cholesterol.) More than 50 years later, Chick-fil-A still uses this method, and the company is the country’s largest buyer of peanut oil.
Why Chick-fil-A?
When the doors first opened in 1967, Truett Cathy wanted the company’s name to reflect the top quality customers should expect each time they visited a restaurant. That’s why he chose Chick-fil-A: “Chick” to represent our signature menu item, and “fil-A” as a play on the word “filet,” with a small twist. He replaced “et” with “A” to represent the “Grade-A” quality of our chicken.
This iconic location closed in April 2021, making way for a massive makeover, and reopened on February 17, 2022. Once reopened, guests recognized the iconic little red door, the original 14 stools, and the new use of the original bricks from the chimney. But one of the new elements to discover is the mural made from thousands of tiny pictures of all the Chick-fil-A’s ever opened. At first glance, you’d never realize the creativity, but once you’re able to look closer, you begin to realize just how the mural comes to life, plus the realization of how many restaurants have been opened and are still in service. It was truly an awesome visual.
Context
Thoughts
– What’s your favorite item/experience at Chick-fil-A?
– Why does this restaurant stand out compared to others?
– Do you have a favorite billboard?
