In the fall of 2019, during a visit to the Chick-fil-A Support Center in Atlanta, Georgia, our Owner/Operator, Shawn York, came across a display of Truett Cathy’s book “Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People”. There, he read, “I learned that some customers are extra hard to please, so I worked harder to be their friend.” In one sentence, Truett’s words impressed that while the hospitality business can be challenging, the call to serve people is a higher purpose – and worth pursuing. Shawn left that day inspired and challenged.
Upon his return, as a leadership team, we committed to reading Truett’s book. One theme stood out: as an entrepreneur, Truett was always looking for business opportunities in unexpected places. As much as he loved growing his business and making a profit, he loved serving people even more. We gravitated to the line in Truett’s book, “…the unexpected opportunity I loved most, was turning a frown into a smile.”
Led by this quote, Shawn challenged our team to say “yes” to the tougher challenges where we may have said “no” in the past. We began to consider those instances “Unexpected Opportunities” to go above and beyond what a customer would expect - and to turn frowns into smiles.
Shawn created a “Heart Chart” for each time we found another Unexpected Opportunity (“UO”). We were challenged to fill the entire chart by the end of 2019.
Spoiler Alert: We did! And afterward, desiring to see the UO movement live on beyond that completed Heart Chart, Shawn formalized our UO system. Today, it lives on in the UO Story our newly-hired Team Members hear, instructions our Team Members learn, and a button on each register to simplify the process that our Team Leaders authorize. Within their first 30 days in our organization, every Team Member in Chick-fil-A Corona should learn how to seek out and find an Unexpected Opportunity so that they would be able to make people’s days better using our food and genuine hospitality.
On February 1st, 2023, three and a half years after the completion of the Heart Chart, Shawn had the opportunity to share the story of his UO journey with the entire Chick-fil-A community. He challenged 9,000 Operators, Staff and spouses to consider the power of saying “yes” in the toughest situations like Truett would’ve done.
In the spring of 2023, we created this place to permanently display all of our “Unexpected Opportunity” stories. Each post (originally from Slack) represents an interaction that was sought out by one of our Chick-fil-A Corona Team Members while on their shift, and then captured and celebrated by one of their leaders or peers. We hope that this system and these stories will continue to encourage all of us to take good care of each other.
