The Tragedy The Chick-Fil-A Founder’s First Restaurant Suffered

One Saturday in 1949, Ben Cathy left the restaurant and met up with his brother, Horace. Both brothers were licensed pilots, so it wasn’t a big deal for them to fly a small plane to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Sadly, they never made it to their destination. Their plane crashed near Dalton, Georgia, and in the space of a day, Truett Cathy lost two brothers (via Chick-fil-A’s website).

He soon purchased Ben’s share of the business, and his wife Jeannette joined him there, doing everything from waiting tables to running the cash register (via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). When the Cathy children were old enough to work, they joined their parents at the restaurant.

Did Cathy channel his grief and loss into his business, one might wonder? Two years later, after opening a second Dwarf House restaurant in Forest Park, Georgia, Cathy developed what would become the original Chick-fil-A fried chicken sandwich. He experimented with the seasoning formula for the chicken and put the pioneering product on a buttered roll, adding pickle slices for a bit of bite and even more crunch.

Cathy obtained a trademark for the name Chick-fil-A in 1963 and opened his first fried-chicken restaurant in a Georgia mall in 1967. Out of tragedy, a classic American success story was born.