The anti-woke American chicken chain that’s coming to a UK high street near you – as FRED KELLY reveals why it’s an unlikely sign that cancel culture is OVER

There was a queue for the queue, and after that there was another queue. When legendary American fast-food franchise Chick-fil-A opened its first restaurant in London earlier this month, excitement was such that customers lined up across the road to buy a ticket that only allowed them to wait outside the restaurant.

‘When I queue up [fried-chicken outlet] ‘We were all given free t-shirts at the Popeyes in Coventry a few years ago,’ lamented 22-year-old Sasha, who waited an hour in Kingston last Saturday to be one of the first to get in.

‘There was no free gift this time, but we were all so excited it didn’t matter. ‘People were filming for social media, they were laughing, it was a party.’

The queue started along Clarence Street near the station, where a security guard handed customers a ticket allowing them to enter the airport-style restaurant, joining a second queue on Eden Street.

Viral videos circulating on TikTok showed hungry families, many with young children, eventually entering and being greeted by barely one person. third Queue: The current wait is undoubtedly compounded by the tantalizing scent of fried chicken filling the air.

‘It was complete chaos,’ recalled Ria, one of the employees paid to serve fried chicken to the crowd at the new branch. “We sold 10,000 bags of sauce in one day,” he concluded, referring to the chain’s beloved ‘Chick-fil-A’ sauce, which is the driving force behind the current craze.

The yellow sauce, whose texture is closer to melted cheese than mayonnaise, is actually vamped ketchup with a ‘smoky’ flavor that one customer described as ‘pickle juice and paprika’.

But despite the current frenzy in Kingston, this hasn’t always been the case.

The Chick-fil-A queue began when a security guard gave customers a ticket allowing them to join the second queue on another street.

Chick-fil-A made its first foray into the British market in 2019 with a restaurant at the Oracle shopping center in Reading.

But when the restaurant opened on October 10, Reading Pride staged a protest attended by more than 60 people and called for a public boycott, shouting “food”. According to organizer Kirsten Bayes, the company’s stance on homosexuality was ‘completely contrary to our values ​​and the values ​​of the United Kingdom’.

Protesters were outraged that President Dan Truett Cathy, son of original founder Samuel Truett Cathy, admitted he was ‘guilty’ of supporting the ‘Biblical definition of family’.

At the time, America was abuzz with controversy over gay marriage.

Dan said: ‘I pray for God’s mercy on our generation who have become proud and arrogant when they think we have the courage to define what marriage is.’

It was soon revealed that the company had donated millions of dollars to charities that were strongly opposed to homosexuality.

Just eight days into service and following angry protests against the company’s perceived homophobia, the American chicken giant announced it would not renew its six-month lease.

The liberal backlash against the company’s anti-gay marriage stance was fierce and pronounced. The Jim Henson toy company has withdrawn its ongoing collaboration, apologized and donated to gay rights group Glaad.

But President Dan Truett Cathy was undaunted and called the US Supreme Court’s recognition of same-sex marriage in 2013 a ‘sad day for our nation’.

Chick-fil-A donated $3 million to religious groups opposed to homosexuality between 2003 and 2009, and donated another $2 million in 2010 alone, according to a report from LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Matters.

Among the lucky recipients was the Paul Anderson Home for Youth, which taught the young people in its care that homosexuality was ‘an outrage against Jesus Christ and his values’.

Chick-fil-A is not without its supporters. The eccentric former Alaskan vice-presidential candidate and reality TV star Sarah Palin (“If God didn’t want us to eat animals, how did he make them out of meat?”) claimed Dan Truett Cathy was ‘crucified’ for her views.

Finally, in 2019, shortly after the outrage, the chain began its ill-fated expansion into Britain and ended.

But that was it then.

Seven years later, the world is a very different place. And judging by this week’s frenzy, something has changed dramatically in our country in terms of consumer conscience.

After the enthusiastic response to the new restaurant last Thursday, could the success of this chicken shop in south-west London be a telling sign that the cancel culture of the 2010s is waning, that the obsession with injecting culture wars into business is exhausting, and that a new generation of young people, force-fed on diets like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Time’s Up and Just Stop Oil, are now more interested in the ‘what’ a company does than the ‘who’ it does? and ‘why’?

When the restaurant last opened in the UK, it was met with protests against Mayor Dan Truett Cathy, who admitted he was ‘guilty’ of supporting the ‘Biblical definition of family’.

You can choose from six flavors on the chicken sandwich, from ‘classic’ (nothing more than a brioche bun, fried chicken and pickles) to ‘spicy deluxe with chili cheddar cheese.’

The firm began life as The Dwarf Grill in 1946, but the first official Chick-fil-A opened in 1967 at the Greenbrier Mall in Atlanta, Georgia, with the slogan: ‘We Didn’t Invent Chicken, Just the Chicken Sandwich.’

The person behind it was the late Samuel Truett Cathy, a devout Southern Baptist who taught a Sunday school for half a century, and to this day no Chick-fil-A has opened on the Lord’s day.

Allegedly inspired by his mother, it was Samuel who tried cooking boneless chicken in the pressure cooker and discovered that this method could produce perfectly juicy breasts at the same speed as flipping a burger. The Truett Cathy family fortune is currently estimated at $34 billion.

In the United States, Chick-fil-A is as familiar to fast-food addicts as McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC. Operating on a franchise model, the chain employs 200,000 ‘team members’ in 3,000 restaurants with an annual turnover of over $22 billion and has been at the top of the American Consumer Satisfaction Index for fast food brands for the last eleven years.

A typical American Chick-fil-A has annual revenue of $9.4 million; this is twice that of the average McDonald’s franchise. However, with only 100 applications approved each year versus 40,000 franchise requests, your chances of getting into Harvard are better than opening your own Chick-fil-A.

With its simple tiles and light-wood furniture branded in red and white, Chick-fil-A in Kingston looks like other global fast-food outlets. Unlike other chains, there’s table service here, and employees take orders from their iPads with ruthless efficiency.

The chicken sandwich comes in six flavors, ranging from ‘classic’ (nothing more than a brioche bun, fried chicken and pickles) to ‘spicy deluxe with chili cheddar cheese.’

A classic sandwich with waffle fries and a drink will set you back just over £10, the equivalent of a similar meal from KFC or McDonald’s.

Priced at £6.49 for eight grilled nuggets weighing just 11 grams each, some products are definitely pricier than others.

After the enthusiastic response to the new restaurant last Thursday, could the success of this south-west London chicken shop be a clear sign that the cancel culture of the 2010s is on the wane?

“We sold 10,000 bags of sauce in a single day,” one employee said, referring to the chain’s beloved ‘Chick-fil-A’ sauce, which is the driving force behind the current craze

“You’ve got to get the sauce, it’s really good,” Nicholas Parker, 23, traveling an hour from south London, told the Daily Mail. ‘Then have the waffle fries. Get the chicken burger. Grab a cookies and cream smoothie. Have the lemonade… then see how you feel.’

Just before 1pm and as the lunch rush began, around 50 people were waiting with varying degrees of patience outside the store on Eden Street. A group of girls dressed in school uniforms danced in front of the Chick-fil-A logo and recorded a video on their phones.

Inside, a battalion of feverish workers raced to hand out menus as the sickening smell of deep-fried food wafted out of the kitchen.

“The sauce is special,” said Marianthi, a 30-year-old American who had traveled more than an hour.

‘I’ve been known to buy bottles of sauce from US supermarkets and bring them here. ‘I was stopped at the airport and had to explain why I had bottles of Chick-fil-A sauce in my bag.’

The verdict on the British bid? “It tastes healthier here,” Marianthi said cheerfully, eating her cheap chicken and large chips. ‘There’s probably less additives, but the fries aren’t as crispy.’

Indeed, the company’s waffle-shaped fries came under scrutiny in 2024 after it was revealed that pea starch had been added to the recipe to help the potatoes ‘stay crisper for longer’. Critics have pointed out that pea starch is often used as a thickening agent in dog food.

Marianthi revealed that she is also gay, as is her dinner companion Theo (23). But then again, perhaps surprisingly and in a sign of changing times, both seemed completely unaffected by Chick-fil-A’s historic homophobia.

“The sauce is special,” said Marianthi, a 30-year-old American who traveled more than an hour for the opening.

“Maybe we’re betraying our people,” said Theo, a regular at the chicken shop; He is dressed all in black and has a bit of chicken fat in his thin beard.

‘But if I don’t eat this piece of chicken, will it change the company?’ he added.

“I accept that a company protects its own religion,” Marianthi continued. ‘Even though I’m gay, I’ll still eat their food. ‘They’re not harming anyone.’

In fact, this seemed to be the prevailing view in a restaurant full of hungry customers who were more interested in the taste of the chicken than the religious views of the people selling it.

‘This is not justified [the homophobia]Alex, in his thirties, who was brought to the restaurant by his girlfriend Kirstie after seeing an advert on TikTok, said over a milkshake: “But I’m just a guy.

But not everyone is so blasé. On opening day last Thursday, a protest organized by veteran LGBT campaigner Peter Tatchell’s eponymous foundation saw a man in a seven-foot chicken costume holding up a banner urging customers to boycott the premises.

“Chick-fil-A’s funding of bigotry is inconsistent with British values,” Tatchell said. ‘A business that uses its profits to fund prejudice should have no place in the UK.’

But whether Tatchell is right or not, I’d like to point out that no one is lining up for the neighboring McDonald’s, Wendy’s or German Donner Kebab branches within 50 yards of the new Chick-fil-A.

For thousands of chicken lovers, the slogan ‘Flavor is King’ is very clear. And in the less hysterical world of the 2020s, a company’s policy is for the birds.