Understanding Chick fil A Values: Purpose, Culture, and What They Mean in Practice

Chick fil A values are built around four official core values  We're Here to Serve, We're Better Together, We Are Purpose-Driven, and We Pursue What's Next all tied to a corporate purpose statement the company has held since 1982: to glorify God and have a positive influence on everyone who comes in contact with Chick-fil-A.

The Corporate Purpose Statement Behind the Values

Most companies post core values and stop there. Chick-fil-A goes a step further  it roots everything in a purpose statement that predates the current values framework by decades.

That statement reads:

"To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us. To have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A."

It's unusually direct for a major corporation. And it shapes how every other value underneath it is interpreted.

Where It Comes From

Founder S. Truett Cathy opened his first restaurant in 1946. His approach to business was explicitly shaped by his Christian faith. The 1982 corporate purpose statement formalized what had already been guiding the business informally for decades.

The company is privately held and still family-owned Truett's grandson Andrew now serves as CEO  which means there's no public shareholder pressure to soften or secularize the language.

How the Company Frames the Religious Language Today

Interestingly, Chick-fil-A doesn't present the Biblical foundation as a requirement for customers or staff. The framing is that Truett believed these were principles that happened to align with good business  not that the business exists to serve a religious mission.

That's a meaningful distinction. It explains how the company can simultaneously hold a faith-rooted purpose statement and describe itself as an inclusive employer. Whether those two things fully coexist in practice is a separate question one worth examining honestly later in this article.

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The Four Official Chick fil A Values Core

These are the values Chick-fil-A, Inc. formally states on its corporate website and career materials. They apply company-wide.

We're Here to Serve

This value applies internally as much as externally. The corporate offices in Atlanta are deliberately called the "Support Center"  the framing is that corporate staff exist to support the Owner-Operators running restaurants, not the other way around.

For customers, this value is most visible in the service culture: consistent politeness, attentiveness, and the "My Pleasure" response standard that Truett Cathy personally introduced after hearing it at a hotel and wanting every guest to feel the same way.

We're Better Together

This is Chick-fil-A's stated inclusivity value. The company describes it as building collaborative teams that draw on diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

It's also the value that sits in the most visible tension with the company's history something most summaries of Chick-fil-A values quietly avoid. That tension gets addressed directly in a later section.

We Are Purpose-Driven

This value connects daily operations back to the 1982 corporate purpose statement. The idea is that decisions big and small should reflect the company's founding mission rather than just short-term business logic.

In practice, this explains choices that cost money in the near term. Sunday closures are the clearest example. The company treats that revenue loss as a deliberate expression of what it stands for, not a scheduling oversight.

We Pursue What's Next

The most commercially conventional of the four. This covers product development, operational efficiency, technology investment, and continuous improvement. The Chick fil A Values app, updated ordering systems, and menu refinements all fall under this value.

It's worth noting this value gets the least attention in most articles about Chick-fil-A's culture  which makes sense, because it doesn't carry the philosophical weight of the others. But it matters for understanding how a values-driven company also stays operationally competitive.

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A Second Set of Values That Appears in Training Materials

Here's something most articles on this topic miss entirely. Search results for Chick-

fil-A values surface two distinct frameworks and readers rarely realize they're looking at different things.

The Five Operational Values

Alongside the official four, a separate set of values appears in employee training materials and on some individual franchise location websites:

Customer First. Personal Excellence. Continuous Improvement. Working Together. Stewardship.

These aren't hidden or unofficial they're just operating at a different level. Where the corporate four values describe who Chick-fil-A is, these five describe how a team member should behave on a given shift.

Why Both Sets Exist and Cause Confusion

Chick-fil-A's franchise model gives individual Owner-Operators real autonomy over how they run their restaurants. The corporate four values set the identity from the top. The operational five give restaurant teams a practical behavioral framework that's easier to apply in daily work.

Neither set cancels the other. But because both circulate online on the official site, on training flashcards, on franchise location pages someone searching "chick fil a values" may encounter either one without context for what they're actually looking at.

How Chick-fil-A Values Show Up in Actual Operations

Stated values are easy to print. What's more telling is where they create real operational commitments especially ones that cost something.

Sunday Closures

Every Chick-fil-A is closed on Sunday. Every single one including locations in airports and stadiums where the pressure to stay open seven days is intense and the revenue loss is significant.

Truett Cathy started this in 1946. The company has held the policy at scale across 3,000+ locations. It's the single most concrete expression of values over profit in the business.

The My Pleasure Standard

Small detail, large signal. Truett Cathy heard an employee at a luxury hotel respond with "my pleasure" and deliberately introduced it across all Chick-fil-A restaurants. It's a trained behavior, not an organic one which says something about how seriously the service culture is operationalized rather than just aspirational.

The Owner-Operator Model

Most Chick-fil-A operators own and run a single restaurant. They're selected through a process that evaluates character and cultural fit as heavily as business capability. The company explicitly says it's not looking for investors it's looking for people who will embody the culture in person, daily.

Over 75 percent of recently selected Owner-Operators had prior experience as Chick-fil-A team members. That's a values pipeline, not just a hiring funnel.

Community Programs

The Shared Table program donates surplus food from restaurants to local shelters and nonprofits. When a new Chick-fil-A opens, the company donates to hunger relief organizations in that community. These programs map directly to the stewardship and purpose language in the corporate values.

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Where the Chick fil A Values Picture Gets Complicated

This is the section most coverage skips. It shouldn't be skipped.

Stated Inclusivity vs. Public History

The "We're Better Together" value includes explicit diversity and inclusion language. At the same time, Chick fil A spent years donating to organizations that actively opposed same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights. This became a major public issue around 2012 and again in 2019.

In 2019, the company announced its charitable giving would shift focus to education, hunger, and homelessness moving away from some of the organizations at the center of the controversy. The announcement was criticized from multiple directions: some felt it didn't go far enough, others felt the company was abandoning its values under pressure.

What the company has not done is offer a detailed public reconciliation of this history with its current inclusivity value. The gap between what's stated and what was practiced for years is real. Readers evaluating Chick-fil-A's values honestly should factor that in whether for employment decisions, purchasing choices, or business analysis.

Franchise-Level Variation in Values Language

Because Owner-Operators run their locations with genuine independence, the values culture isn't perfectly uniform. Some franchise websites publish their own distinct core values pages with locally written language that differs from the corporate version. 

The experience and culture at one Chick-fil-A location can genuinely differ from another.

That's partly by design. But it means "Chick-fil-A values" isn't a single, uniform reality across every restaurant.

What These Values Mean for Different Audiences

Job Seekers and Employees

The culture is service-oriented and purpose-driven, with a faith-adjacent foundation that's openly stated. The company has a documented track record of internal promotion many current operators started as team members. Prospective employees should go in with clear eyes: the culture is real, but so is its history.

Customers

The values most visible to customers are the service quality, the Sunday closure policy, and  if they look into it the community programs. The broader corporate values matter to some consumers and not at all to others. That's a personal call.

Business Researchers

Chick-fil-A is a privately held company, so detailed financials aren't publicly disclosed. What is publicly available is an unusually transparent values framework for a major food chain. It's a legitimate case study in values-based business modeling with the honest caveat that the stated values and historical actions haven't always aligned cleanly.

Conclusion

Chick fil A values combine a faith-rooted corporate purpose with four practical core values that shape hiring, service, and operations. They're more grounded in actual business decisions than most corporate values statements but the gap between stated inclusivity and documented history is real and worth understanding.

Frequently Asked Questions About Chick fil A Values

What are the four official Chick fil A core values? 

We're Here to Serve, We're Better Together, We Are Purpose-Driven, and We Pursue What's Next. These are the current corporate-level values, separate from the five operational values used in some training contexts.

Is Chick fil A a Christian company? 

It's faith-influenced. The corporate purpose statement references glorifying God, and the founder built the business on Biblical principles. It doesn't require religious affiliation from employees or customers.

Why does Chick-fil-A close on Sundays?

Founder Truett Cathy began this in 1946 to give employees a day of rest. The company maintains it at every location as a direct, deliberate expression of its values including locations where staying open would generate significant additional revenue.

Have Chick-fil-A's values changed over time? 

The purpose statement has been in place since 1982. The current four-value framework is more recent. The 2019 shift in charitable giving changed donation priorities but not the formal values language.

Do all Chick-fil-A locations follow the same values? 

The corporate values apply chain-wide. But individual Owner-Operators have autonomy, and some publish their own locally written values. Cultural experience can vary by location.