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By MARY JANE PARK, Times Staff WriterChick-fil-A's founder - who doesn't raise chickens - will speak to a soldout crowd at the Mayor's Prayer Breakfast.
ST. PETERSBURG - S. Truett Cathy, founder and chairman of Chick-fil-A, will give the keynote speech Friday at the Mayor's Prayer Breakfast, sponsored by the YMCA of Greater St. Petersburg. The event is sold out.
Cathy, 84, and Jeannette, his wife of 57 years, live near Atlanta on a 262-acre farm on the outskirts of Jonesboro, Ga., in rural Clayton County.
They do not raise chickens, he said in a telephone interview with the St. Petersburg Times on Tuesday.
Here is an edited transcript:
You've been teaching Sunday school at First Baptist Church of Jonesboro to 13-year-old boys for more than 50 years. Why that age group?
Well, the boys - I feel I've chosen 13-year-olds because when they come in, they're little boys, and at 14, it seems like they're young men. Those are critical years. When they are 15, 16 and 17, if they can get through that period of time without making a lot of mistakes, that's when they decide where they're going to school and who their friends are going to be.
Why did you focus your business on chicken?
Well, I built my business on hamburger and steak (at the Dwarf Grill, later the Dwarf House, the Atlanta diner he started with his brother, Ben). I used to grind my own meats and cut my own steaks. It took longer to cook chicken than anything else. Deboning the chicken cuts the cooking time in half. We were selling more chicken than we were hamburger. That led me to establish Chick-fil-A.At Chick-fil-A, we cook chicken under pressure, from beginning to end, in less than 4 minutes. We use that very well for short-order, or quick-service, food.
Our first operation was in a shopping center. At that time (1967), it was the first (such) operation in a shopping center. Now that we're building free-standing stores, 50 percent of our business is through the drive-through window. Everybody's in a hurry, it seems, nowadays.
I understand that your grandson Andrew Cathy is managing a Chick-fil-A here in St. Petersburg (on 66th Street N, near Tyrone Square Mall).
Yes. I don't believe he's quite open yet. (The store is scheduled to open in February.) He grew up working behind the counter. He spent two years teaching. Sixty-five percent of our people work for Chick-fil-A when they're 15, 16 years old. A lot of our people take some time away and make their own decisions. That makes my job much easier, because we're attracting the kind of people who want to work here.
If you work 20 hours a week for two years, you get a $1,000 scholarship. We've given 20,000 of those. That's $20-million. $1,000 doesn't go far, but it gets you started.
We're closed on Sundays so people can go to their church ... Everybody likes to have Sunday off. In fact, that's when most young people call in sick. Absenteeism is high on that day (at other fast food restaurants).
Are you active in politics at all?
No, I'm very shy on that. I don't get involved in politics. I have my own opinion. I think it's very important for us to have respect for our president and support his efforts. I like to think of people in our government as public servants.
Former President Jimmy Carter has been critical of what he understands to be a breakdown in the separation of church and state in the United States. What are your thoughts on the subject?
The quality and stability of our families - we seem to be losing both of those. Chick-fil-A has put a Bible in every public school in Georgia. We have the support of the governor to do that, and the school superintendents. The law reads that you can put a Bible in school as long as it's a gift.I'm a Christian, and I think that's the religion, but if someone believes otherwise, I don't argue with them. I'm strong in my faith, and I believe the Bible to be the blueprint and the road map for a man's life.