Gobble gobble, Puget Sound. Chick-Fil-A is bringing its deep fried fowl to the area for the first time. The fast food chicken sandwich mega-chain announced its plans to open restaurants in Bellevue, Lynwood and Tacoma in March of 2015, with construction slated for this October.
Chick-Fil-A’s COO Dan Cathy got in trouble in 2012 when it was discovered that the company’s offshoot charity foundaton had been donating millions to anti-gay rights campaigns.
“I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage'” Cathy said on The Ken Coleman radio show in 2012. “I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.”
The statements launched protests that found gay couples making out in Chick-Fil-A restaurants, as well as counter-acts of public suppot from traditional marriage activists like Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day” raised the company’s profits 29.9 percent by coralling supporters into the stores for a single day of deep-fried resistance to perceived encroaching moral bankruptcy.
Cathy has since said the company would pull its donations out of traditional marriage campaigns and focus on selling chicken. But it will be interesting to see if the the lingering ill will may affect sales in our super gay Puget Sound region—althought admittedly, Bellevue, Lynwood and Tacoma certainly are a bit different than Seattle.