Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Dan Cathy wishes to shed anti-gay image of Chick-fil-a.

Yes, I get most people are over this subject. Chick-fil-a was my first place of employment and I actually enjoyed my time there. Because of my experience there, the "CFA Appreciation Day" and boycott are subjects I like to keep tabs on.


The intent of this post is not to tell people it is okay to eat Chick-fil-a now. I have many friends who still refuse to go there and I completely support the decision of an individual to not spend his money there. The reason for me sharing this article is to show how effective boycotts can be, despite the flaws and mudslinging the CFA boycott brought forth.

Dan Cathy, the CEO of CFA, recently stated:
"Every leader goes through different phases of maturity, growth and development and it helps by (recognizing) the mistakes that you make. And you learn from those mistakes. If not, you’re just a fool. I’m thankful that I lived through it and I learned a lot from it. Probably the elements that were stressful for me most is from our internal staff and from operators and how this may be affecting them. The bottom line is we have a responsibility here to keep the whole of the organization in mind and it has to take precedence over the personal expression and opinion on social issues."

Yes, Chick-fil-a had record breaking sales in 2012 because of the love people gave thanks to Mike Huckabee and Dan Cathy's statements. Considering the customer base CFA has, this should be of no surprise. But Dan Cathy and CFA's PR department knows that this image of being anti-gay is not good for business in the long run. Sure, they will always do well in the Bible Belt and other socially conservative areas, but CFA wants to expand business. In order to do so, they will have to shed the image they fairly earned in 2012. Of course, CFA would have never had this image of being anti-gay had a boycott never taken place.

On top of that, CFA has cut donations to anti-gay organizations by 99.2% in 2012 according to ThinkProgress. The initial CFA boycott started in 2011.

#LGBT #chickfila #CFA #grapefruitjuice
http://www.myajc.com/news/business/cathy-seeks-to-put-gay-marriage-flap-behind-chick-/nfCHj/

(Side note: I decided to sync my blog with my Google+ account. Boldings, hashtags, and style of postings are done in an effort to make my thoughts easier to share with the Google+ community. We will see how this works :-) )