The first Chick-fil-A restaurant in Tulare County will host a “Moove-In Party” on Thursday, May 7 to celebrate its opening at 2977 Market Dr. in Tulare.
A crowd is expected when its doors open at 6:30 a.m. – and continue through the day – since the possibility of a Chick-fil-A opening in Tulare County has been talked about and anticipated for years.
“The city is very excited to welcome Tulare County’s first Chick-fil-A to the city of Tulare,” City Manager Marc Mondell said. “Anytime we can associate our name with such an important and impressive brand, it helps to elevate our credibility and presence in the marketplace.”
Chick-fil-A is also the first new business to open at the Highway 99 – Cartmill Interchange.
More than just a food business
Tulare Chick-fil-A owner Brett McKinnon understands the appeal of the popular fast-food chain.
“It’s the food,” McKinnon said. “People love the food. It’s the customer service that you get when you come to Chick-fil-A. We always say we’re in the people business, not just the food business.”
Chick-fil-A, which offers a menu of sandwiches, chicken nuggets, sides, salads and breakfasts, is best known for its Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich. The restaurant chain uses quality products, according to McKinnon.
“Everything’s hand-breaded in the back,” he said. “While a lot of other restaurants might use frozen chicken that are just thrown in a fryer, we have a milk-and-egg wash. We dunk it in and hand-bread it in a coater, and then we deep-fry it. That helps us stand out – the freshness of it and that it’s hand-breaded.”
The Tulare Chick-fil-A will begin with a team of 140 employees, a lot of them young and part time. McKinnon recalled working 40 hours a week for a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, when he was 16.
“I’ve heard a lot of stories in our interviews of, ‘It’s so hard for me to get a job because I’m 16 and nobody wants to hire people under the age of 18,’” he said. “My wife and I were passionate about bringing them in, so we increased our hiring numbers so we could bring a lot of those part-time kids in with us.”
Three days before the grand opening, each employee invited two friends or family members to the restaurant to place orders.
“Our team gets to have experience taking the orders and practice making some simple food,” McKinnon said. “We did that today and we’re also doing that tonight. For the nighttime one, we’re going to have some music set up and some games so it’ll kind of be a fun atmosphere. Once our team’s done serving their families, they’ll get a chance to clock out, grab some food, and hang out and play some games with them as well.”
The ‘Moove-In Party’
“We’re going to have a ‘cow event,’” McKinnon said about the May 7 celebration. “Anybody that comes dressed in partial cow attire – it could be spotted shirts, anything – can get a free entree for coming in. They can come into the drive-thru or inside and dine with us.”
Customers can also look forward to giveaways.
“We have some swag drops to hand out. We’re going to have some stickers to hand out to celebrate the moment,” McKinnon said. “We’ll have ‘Mobile Thru,’ which is where you can come to the drive-thru and place an order on your phone. The first 50 people that place a mobile order will get a little swag bag and a giveaway.”
The celebration will extend into the community. The Chick-fil-A Corporation made a $25,000 to the Central California Food Bank.
“It’s something they do when we go into a new community,” McKinnon said. “On a smaller version, we partnered with the Tulare Lighthouse Rescue Mission. We’ll donate all of our leftover food to them and they will repurpose that and serve it to families, and maybe to some of the homeless as well.”
Chick-fil-A is likely to contribute a generous amount of leftovers.
“We’re just high on standards,” McKinnon said. “Any time a filet lasts 20 minutes for us, we put it in the leftovers, and then those are cooled down and sent for repurposing where they can turn them into soups and all kinds of different things for the community.”
The result of a long process
The new restaurant is along Highway 99 in north Tulare, which McKinnon considers “a phenomenal location.”
“Our Chick-fil-A selection process is long and unique,” McKinnon said. “The corporate side just looks for the right community at the right time, and finding the right piece of property as well. They feel like Tulare checked a lot of those boxes.”
McKinnon also appreciates the partnership that Chick-fil-A has with the city of Tulare.
“They’ve been great partners in helping us get the utilities we needed out here so we could open,” he said.
And the city appreciates becoming the location of the newest Chick-fil-A restaurant.
“The community of Tulare welcomes Chick-fil-A with open arms and excitement,” Tulare Mayor Patrick Isherwood said. “There is a lot of work that takes place to be the city selected as the first new location outside of Fresno and Bakersfield.
“The investment in Tulare brings over 140 new jobs,” he added. “This is another growing economic opportunity to capture travelers off the 99 and have them eat, fuel, and shop in Tulare.”
This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Tulare’s first Chick-fil-A opens with ‘Moove-In Party,’ freebies
Reporting by Steve Pastis, Visalia Times-Delta / Visalia Times-Delta
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
