S. Truett Cathy is a real-life, living Horatio Alger story. Growing up in a boarding house his mother operated during the Great Depression, he learned the principles of hard work, fairness, honesty, loyalty, and respect. When he opened a small restaurant in 1946 with his brother Ben, he put those principles to work and immediately began to experience their rewards.
Twenty-three years later Cathy opened the first Chick-fil-A restaurant, which was unique in America in two ways: it served the first boneless breast chicken sandwich, and it was the first fast-food restaurant to operate in a shopping mall. Today there are more than one thousand Chick-fil-A restaurants with more than $1 billion in sales annually while adhering to a policy unknown in the fast-food business -- Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays.
Truett Cathy's commitment reaches far beyond the people who work and eat in his restaurants. Through the WinShape. Centre Foundation, funded by Chick-fil-A, he operates foster homes for more than 120 children, sponsors a summer camp for more than 1,600 childre
Armed with a keen business sense, a work ethic forged during the Depression, and a personal and business philosophy based on biblical principles, Truett Cathy took a tiny Atlanta diner, originally called the Dwarf Grill, and transformed it into Chick-fil-A, the nation’s largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain with more than $5 billion in sales in 2013 and more than 1,800 locations. His tremendous business success allowed Truett to pursue other passions – most notably his interest in the development of young people.
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