Chick-fil-A’s first foray into the UK didn’t quite go to plan.
The American fast food joint set up shop in Reading in 2019, but just six months after the restaurant opened, it was shuttered.
The closure followed major customer backlash over the controversial views on same-sex marriage held by Chick-fil-A’s chairman as well as donations that had been made by the founder’s charitable foundation to anti-LGBT groups.
Flash forward six years and Chick-fil-A is trying to crack the UK again, with two service station sites launched in Belfast in early 2025 and a new restaurant opening in Leeds on October 23.
Customers have been queuing down the street to try the chicken sandwiches, nuggets and waffle fries at the Commercial Street location in Leeds, with people waiting more than 30 minutes to order. A number of popular influencers have also visited, sharing glowing reviews on TikTok, hailing the food ‘incredible’ and ‘delicious’.
But there are still many who are unhappy about the chicken chain’s return, with campaigners from the Peter Tatchell Foundation recently picketing the head office location in London, branding the business ‘toxic’ and claiming it’s ‘not welcome here’.
Why is there controversy around Chick-fil-A?
While some things have changed in the last six years, with Chick-fil-A appointing its first head of diversity in 2020, the chain still remains a very conservative business, with ‘glorify God’ at the heart of its corporate mission.
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This is also evident in the opening hours for its Leeds restaurant, which will be from 10AM to 10PM Monday to Saturday.
The doors will be closed on Sunday each week, as part of a ‘tradition’ that started in the States.
A message on the chain’s website claims this is a break that the chain’s founder, Truett Cathy, wanted for his staff ‘having worked seven days a week in restaurant open 24 hours’. They claimed he ‘saw the importance of closing on Sundays’.
However, as a devout Southern Baptist who taught Sunday school for more than 50 years, there was likely a bit more to it under the surface.
A spokesperson for Chick-fil-A told Metro: ‘Closing on Sunday is a tradition that dates back to Chick-fil-A’s founder Truett Cathy, who wanted to give his team members a day to rest, spend time with family or worship if they chose to – and we continue to honour that sentiment today.’
As well as founding Chick-fil-A, Truett also founded the WinShape Foundation, a Christian non-profit organisation that has ‘ministries’ to serve ‘children, marriages, work teams, foster families and more’, according to its website.
WinShape has been largely funded by Chick-fil-A, as seen in tax filings from 2022, and the foundation has come under fire for having donated to the National Christian Foundation, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) as well as the Salvation Army.
Chick-fil-A has since confirmed they no longer fund these organisations and instead focuses its giving on ‘education, homelessness and hunger’.
The chain previously told the BBC: ‘Our giving has always focused on youth and education. We have never donated with the purpose of supporting a social or political agenda.’
Truett died in September 2014, but the fast food chain remains in his family today, with Truett’s son Dan becoming chairman in 2013 and Dan’s son Andrew being named the CEO in 2021.
And the Cathy family’s religious views have continued to spark controversy, especially when Dan spoke out about his views on same-sex marriage in 2012, confirming that he believed in ‘the biblical definition of the family unit’.
However, he later told the Atlanta Journal-Consitution he’d made a ‘mistake’ taking a public stance, but admitted his views hadn’t changed: ‘I think the time of truths and principles are captured and codified in God’s word and I’m just personally committed to that.’
He added: ‘I know others feel very different from that and I respect their opinion and I hope that they would be respectful of mine.’
When was Chick-fil-A founded and how many restaurants are there?
Truett opened his first restaurant in Atlanta in 1946, which was originally known as the Dwarf Grill. It was there that he created the original Chick-fil-A sandwich, though the recipe wasn’t ‘perfected’ until 1964.
The very first Chick-fil-A opened after this in 1967 in Atlanta’s Greenbriar Mall and there are now more than 3,000 restaurants across the US, Puerto Rico, Canada and the UK.
Following on from the opening of the new Leeds restaurant, Chick-fil-A has confirmed plans to open further sites in Liverpool and London over the next few years.
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