This didn’t make it into the Noshing Around column but I thought it was worthy of a mention.

Chick-fil-A will open its first two stand-alone restaurants in Tucson on Thursday, Nov. 29, giving away $26,000 in free Chick-fil-A food to the first 100 adults in line at both locations that morning. The new restaurants are located at 4585 N. Oracle Road and at 3605 E. Broadway Blvd (formerly Krispy Kremes).

A one-year supply of free Chick-fil-A Combo Meals (52 coupons) will be awarded to each of the first 100 adults, age 18 and older with identification, at each new stand-alone restaurant. The lines can begin forming up to 24 hours prior to the opening, with the prizes being given away on Nov. 29 between 6 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. The restaurants will open immediately afterward.

I wonder if this will be a raving scene like In-N-Out Burger?

If you go, tell us what happens.

This article appears in Nov 22-28, 2007.

19 replies on “First 100 Will Receive Free Chick-Fil-A for a Year”

  1. Ms Zoldan,
    You seem to have your finger on the pulse of the restaurant scene in Tucson. Do you know what restaurant they are building on the corner of Speedway and Silverbell?

  2. Wanda,
    I don’t usually go west of the I-10 on Speedway if I can help it. I will ask around unless one of our wonderful blog readers and writers know.
    What makes you so sure that it’s a restaurant and not a bank building?
    By the way does anyone know what’s going in on the SE corner of Wilmot and Speedway (the other direction). That’s where the Smuggler’s Inn was. Then it was flattened and then a big hole and now has some construction activity. I drove by there recently and was going too fast to see what the signs said.
    Signs, signs, everywhere a sign…

  3. I seem to recall that an assisted living center was going to be built there, but I don’t know for sure.

  4. Oh no, here we go again. Queue the idiots with no lives, who will line up for some free crappy food and give Chick-Fil-A the millions of dollars worth of free publicity that they’re striving for. Lines of cars around the block to get free fast food? Here come the TV-news vans! It’s a human-interest story! Let’s interview some poor schlub for whom a new fast-food restaurant is a life-transforming event! Wooo hoooo! All hail the new chicken sandwich restaurant! Down with Church’s Fried Chicken! Down with KFC! Down with Popeye’s (aka “Pope Yes”)! Down with Cluck-U Chicken! Down with In-N-Out Burger! (Sure, they’re new, but what has In-N-Out done for us lately? Free milkshakes? I think not!) Down with Krispy Kreme donuts!

    Up, up with Chick-Fil-A! And up, up with grade-school style business names! We’re illiterate and we mete out free malnourishing chicken to people with no lives! We’re Chick-Fil-F*ckin’-A!

  7. Red Star, that would be wonderful. However, the only way for this to work out is for the homeless to be notified. The reason is that they rarely have access to the Internet and if they are living alone they rarely have the same access to the news that we do.

    Remember:
    TV news = you need a TV
    Internet news = you need an Internet connection

  8. I wanted to follow up and recommend printing this page about Chic-Fil-A . If you just tell someone, they might look at you funny. Print out a page that includes

    1 – what the deal is
    2 – where to do it
    3 – what the details are

    This TW blog is a good one to print. Print copies and hand to people who would appreciate the deal. Then realize they better get to the Chic-Fil-A by around 1 a.m., if the Black Friday lines are any indication.

  11. Free advertising for Chick-Fil-A! Yaaaa-hooo!

    Do the math: Free cheap sandwiches for 100 people, for a year, is supposedly worth $26,000. (Is that $26,000 total, or per person? I am assuming it’s total, but who knows.) But that’s BS because you know people aren’t actually going to eat Chick-Fil-A every day — not unless they’re extremely poor (or homeless). The average person, with free Chick-Fil-A for a year, might go there once or twice a week. I would also want to know the fine print of that deal. I am willing to bet the free food has strings attached, such as “free sandwich but you gotta pay for fries and drinks,” or “only 1 visit per day.” (This is where real reporting would be nice, instead of just merrily passing along the restaurant’s dubious “$26,000” claim. At the very least it merits the word “allegedly” or “supposedly” in front of it.)

    So let’s look at that $26,000 investment of free food by Chick-Fil-A. Now, look at how much it’s worth in terms of free advertising. I imagine a single 30-second commercial on a local TV station runs, what, $1,000? (I have no idea, but it ain’t cheap.) A quarter-page advertisement in the Tucson Weekly is probably up there as well. I am probably making a very low estimate here.

    The Chick-Fil-A effort will get them news stories on all the local TV stations, who will report on the traffic, interview people waiting in line, and show multiple images of the Chick-Fil-A store with all the hubbub surrounding it. The talk radio shows will discuss it at length, especially the morning radio shows that are looking for goofy, unchallenging topics to riff on. Then you’ll have an Arizona Daily Star story, a Tucson Citizen story, and whatever the Tucson Weekly does (including this blog, which will reach untold thousands of people). From all of this there will be a good deal of word-of-mouth (“did you hear that Chick-Fil-A is giving away free food to the first people? I’m so psyched!”) followed by controversy (“What if people get food poisoning from eating a year’s worth of the growth hormone in the chicken?” / “What if the 101st person is a recently laid-off man trying to feed his family of 5 and he ends up jumping in front of a train?”).

    That’s gotta be over a million bucks woth of free advertising and publicity. Excellent returns on a $26,000 investment!

    Me, I’ll stay home and eat chicken from a large can. With some Chicken-in-a-Biscuit crackers on the side. Thanks Easter Bunny….bawk bawk!

  13. Here’s a Tucson Weekly idea for a story: Identify the 100 winners of the Chick-Fil-A contest. Get in touch with them and get them to agree to participate. Then…

    — Weigh them
    — Get clothed, full-body photos of them
    — Have them get a medical check-up including blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.
    — Give them a diary with forms on it where they can record each time they visited Chick-Fil-A and what they ate. (Leave a space where they can also mention what other foods they ate when not at Chick-Fil-A.)

    Wait a year.

    Then re-measure them, collect their diaries, and perform an analysis. Make sure to get photos from the same angles, etc. (You might need a wide-angle lens at this point.)

    We’re talking a Pulitzer-Prize-winning article here. For full effect, maybe get a few quotes from Morgan Spurlock and Foghorn Leghorn.

  16. Jimmy, I figure if one wants to help the homeless get this free chicken deal, then I can’t think of any better way than to give them the details, as they might not necessarily have access to the details the same way we do.

    Imagine the impact if someone without money for food had access to free chicken every day thanks to this deal.

    Of course, one has to be smart about it and who they approach. I’m just saying.

  18. FYI–According to the PR firm handling C-F-A, both locations did reach 100 people by 6 a.m. and all the TV stations in Tucson came out this morning for LIVE coverage. (It must’ve been a slow morning.)

    The 52 coupons can be used anywhere, any time, and can be given away to others. The only restriction is that they use them for either the Chick-fil-A sandwich combo meal or the Chick-fil-A nuggets combo meal.

    Yep, it’s food that will make you fat. I have never eaten in a Chick and I most likely won’t start.

    I went in Lucky Wishbone once and the odor of grease caused me to gag. I had to leave. The same happened in a Waffle House in North Carolina. I am very sensitive to certain odors and certainly grease is one of them; ditto for most perfumes. (That’s probably more than you wanted to know.)

  19. Yes, it was Bart Simpson who said, many years ago, “I’m so hungry, I could eat at Arby’s.” About that time the Arby’s around Speedway/Tucson Blvd had major venting issues that gave rise to Red Star’s Restaurant Rule of Thumb: If, after dining, you leave an establishment reeking of the kitchen, don’t go back…there’s something wrong…but of course, if you’re hungry…

    (this comment is awaiting moderation)

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