Truett Cathy: Mor Than Just Chikin
by: Dwayne Hastings - Sep 1, 2005 - comment
You’ve probably eaten his chicken sandwiches, but you may never have heard of him. While Truett Cathy is the man behind the success of Chick-fil-A, his heartfelt concern isn’t fast food, but the dismal future many at-risk youngsters are facing.
Beginning his restaurant career in 1946 after leaving the Army, Cathy and his brother pooled their resources—he sold his automobile—and came up with $4,000. The pair borrowed another $6,600 and bought a piece of property in the Atlanta suburb of Hapeville, Ga., where they built and stocked a small restaurant. “It wasn’t a penny more, because it was all we had saved and all we could borrow. But we were determined we were going to make it,” Cathy recalled in a recent interview.
Cathy admitted the timing for opening the small twenty-four-hour diner—which has grown into the chain known as Chick-fil-A—might not have been the best. Resources were scarce at the close of World War II; there was a shortage of the materials that were necessary to run a restaurant.
But Cathy said like many things in life, if you wait until what seems the best time to do something, you often end up never doing it. “It never seems like it’s the right timing for it,” he said. “And if you wait until the right time, then you’ll probably never get started. Right after World War II was a very difficult time to start, but we struggled through it.”
Cathy made the decision—in the beginning—to close on Sundays. “As I reflect back, it’s probably the best decision I ever made. It’s helped us to attract the caliber of people that appreciate having Sunday off, and it recognizes that families need at least one day a week to be together,” he said.
Truett Cathy’s business acumen was sharpened during the depression of the 1920s. While his family knew the deep poverty of the time, he recognizes now it was actually “a blessing to be brought up in a time of where you had to struggle to make an existence.”
“Those that worked harder got more success,” Cathy said. “I was determined that I wanted to be somebody and achieve something that might be noteworthy.” He lived in a boarding house with his family where his mother taught him valuable lessons, such as “how to shuck corn, shell peas, and wash dirty tables.”
“Back then Cokes were selling for six for a quarter,” Cathy recalled. “I realized if I had a quarter and six empty bottles, I could buy six Cokes and peddle them to my neighbors for a nickel apiece and recognize a five cent profit. So that’s what I did. When I sold those Cokes, I ran back and got six more and six more and six more.
“Finally, when I accumulated enough resources, they permitted me to flag down a Coke truck to buy a full case of Coca-Colas—twenty-four Cokes for eighty cents. When you sell twenty-four Cokes for five cents apiece, and paid eighty cents for all of them, you made yourself forty cents. To me, I thought that was big business. And so that was beginning for me. I was brought up to work. I started working when I was eight years old,” said Cathy, author of It’s Better to Build Boys Than Mend Men.
Chick-fil-A has grown into one of the largest privately owned restaurant chains in the nation. Yet Cathy’s intent is to do much more than serve chicken. The company’s official purpose statement says the corporation exists “to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A.”
While Cathy might be known best for his boneless breast of chicken sandwiches, the welfare of young people has been his driving passion for many years.
“I tell fathers how important it is not only to dictate but to demonstrate,” Cathy said, adding that he tells the young men in his Sunday School class, “When you’re disobedient to your parents, you’re disobedient to God.” He has taught youth on Sunday mornings for fifty years.
Cathy’s desire to help young people prompted his establishment of the WinShape Centre Foundation, Inc., in 1984. The foundation supports a long-term foster care program, a summer camp, a generous scholarship program in conjunction with Rome, Ga.-based Berry College, and marriage enrichment retreats.
“Parents can’t wait until their child is a teenager to start raising them,” Cathy said. “You’ve got to start very early. It is better to build boys than to mend men.”
He said trying to help men who have gone astray is like “putting a Band-Aid on a severe wound: It doesn’t hurt, but it’s likely not to help anything permanently.”
“I tell fathers: ‘Be concerned if your children are not responding to you, but more concerned about what you do.’ Children see everything that we do. You can’t expect your children to behave any different than the example that you set,” he said.
Cathy, whose own father suffered from bouts of depression, believes the greatest thing a mother and father can offer their children is parents who live happily under the same roof and who aren’t afraid to demonstrate their love for their children. “I inquire of my Sunday School boys every year: ‘What would you change in your home, if you could change it?’ The number one response is this: ‘I would stop the arguing between my parents, my older brother or older sister,’” he said.
While Cathy’s parents were together in the same house as he grew up, he admits his father wasn’t the kind he would go to if he had a problem. “One of the things that provoked me was that he never helped me on my paper route, which I carried for seven straight years. On a Sunday morning the papers are heavy. It may be raining. Maybe I’ve got a fever, but my dad would never get up and help me.” Cathy recalled there was a man who had a son his age that also carried papers who helped Cathy in getting his papers delivered. “He gave me a lot of attention and ultimately became my Sunday School teacher. And I had him for a full five years. It was during the time I was a teenager, when I needed someone, and he gave me a lot of his attention,” he reminisced.
“We get our priorities all mixed up. We think that we’ve got to buy new automobiles, fancy clothes, and give our children things that we didn’t have when we were small. But we’re failing to give them the important things,” he warned. He recalled his daughter coming home from college one weekend and telling him some of her memories of growing up.
“She said, ‘Dad, you know the thing that I remember so favorably about you is the times you used to come to my bedside and permit me to tell you all the things I did that day,’ Cathy recalled. “Now, I don’t remember doing it all that often. I wish I could turn the clock back and get an opportunity to talk with her all day long if she wanted to,” he said.
“Grasp the opportunities to listen and talk with your teenager not when you have time—not when they have time—but when you make time,” he stressed.
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