What Chick-fil-A Operator Tim Sweetman Learned from a Michelin-Starred Restaurant
Really excited to share with you an article published in QSR Magazine this week highlighting some of the work I’ve done and the philosophy I’ve carried at Chick-fil-A.
I’d love if you’d share this if you find it helpful!
Just about a year ago, on a trip to New York City, Tim Sweetman and his wife made a pitstop for some “work research.” Having read Danny Meyer’s famed 2006 bestseller “Setting the Table,” Sweetman, a Chick-fil-A owner-operator out of Millsboro, Delaware, felt he had to visit one of the Union Square Hospitality luminary’s spots. He picked the nine-time James Beard Award-winning Flatiron District landmark Gramercy Tavern.
Sweetman, who grew up working in Chick-fil-A malls and opened his restaurant in April 2018, had never been to a Michelin-Starred eatery. But it wasn’t only a leisure trip; Sweetman planned to take mental notes.
In the back of his mind was a presentation from former Chick-fil-A CEO and current chairman Dan Cathy—the second top executive in the brand’s history, following his father, Truett, and before Dan’s son, Andrew, took over in 2021.
Dan that day shared thoughts with operators on how to elevate the dining room. He had an anecdote of making sure, whenever somebody asked for a refill, you put a napkin down underneath their drink. It might seem subtle and hard to gauge if customers noticed, yet it’s precisely the kind of granular detail, Dan explained, separating Chick-fil-A from the parameters of “typical fast food.” Sweetman, to this day, trains team members to do so.
Sweetman was taken by what he observed at Gramercy Tavern. “The thing that struck me the most is, you go through this whole process of eating some of the most incredible food you’ve ever eaten, drinking incredible drinks, and having this incredible service, and get to the end and go, ‘there’s no way this could be any better,’” he says.
But then, a server came over and dropped off a small “sweet bite” of chocolate and brought a loaf of breakfast bread they could take and eat the next morning.
