Chick-Fil-A "A List Club" Experience

                                             Courtesy of wvpanoply.blogspot.com

Full disclosure here, my wife strongly discouraged I not write this post because she's afraid she'll get banished from the Chick-Fil-A A List Club.  But, this experience was unique to say the least, and I recommend everyone who likes Chick-Fil-A try it at least once.

                                               Courtesy of commentphotos.com

OK, so first of all, Chick-Fil-A is awesome.  I know I espoused a long time ago that Bojangles is better, but really that's like asking would you rather see your favorite team win the World Series or the Super Bowl?  You can't go wrong either way.  But, what a lot of people might not know is Chick-Fil-A has an A List Club.  It's like a VIP club for Chick-Fil-A, and it's by invitation only, like The Freemasons, but for chicken.  So you might ask, what all does it entail?

                                                     Courtesy of cincyshopper.com

Well, if you have the Silver Card, after so many visits you can register for a free Chick-Fil-A dinner.  Apparently, this dinner fills up really fast, and they send you alerts on or around midnight, and it turns into the Oklahoma Land Grab in a first come first served basis.  The other guests all knew about this alert, and had tried multiple times to get in before finally being able to find a spot for a free dinner, so apparently it's a big deal.  My wife was kind enough to register for this free dinner, and decided to bring me along as her guest; which after this post, may be the last time I'm ever allowed to go to Chick-Fil-A with her.

                                                             Courtesy of suzannegeisemann.com

So, we get to Chick-Fil-A after leaving work, and it is a straight up sit down dinner party.   They lead you to the back room that is enclosed with the shades down for privacy, and they have silver platters on the table for your food to be presented to you.  We arrive about 5 minutes early and then we wait for the other A-Listers, as they are called, to arrive.  Eventually, everyone arrives, and they show you the menu, which I kid you not, is the same Chick-Fil-A menu at any restaurant in North America.  I really don't know why I was expecting something different.  I thought maybe because we're at an A-List dinner, that there was some secret Chick-Fil-A menu, that only the VIPs and the Cathys were privy to.  There is not.  

                                                           Courtesy of thatfoodcray.com

So, we order a normal Chick-Fil-A meal, and then they bring it to us and place it on the silver platters.  My wife says these are called "chargers."  The meal took around 10-15 minutes, which was kind of surprising considering this was an A-Lister dinner and this is a restaurant that prides itself on speedy service, but hey we were there to learn, and learn we did.  Our Chick-Fil-A A List Coordinator entertained us with trivia facts about Chick-Fil-A, along with a complete history about his franchise's location, and the Cathy family's business ventures.   He also asked each guest what their favorite meal was, before telling us they were getting rid of the Spicy Chicken Biscuit, and let's just say I was doing my best to be as polite as possible, because it's a free Chick-Fil-A meal and Southerners pride themselves on hospitality, but to the person or group of people who made the executive decision to get rid of the Spicy Chicken Biscuit....you've just made a number of powerful new enemies.

                                                       Courtesy of brandeating.com

Back to the dinner; after we finish, it's time for the Kitchen Tour, and I kid you not they have "Backstage Passes" to the Chick-Fil-A kitchen, complete with paper hats.  

                                                   Courtesy of giphy.com

The hats look like Krispy Kreme (also an awesome place) hats, but the hats are made for a 7 year old child.  Watching grown men put on these hats (myself included), and women whose hair are in buns attempt to put on these hats that barely covered the bun was nothing short of comedic gold.  At one point my wife goes, "Oh, it's a fascinator."  The lady responded back "Oh, it is fascinating."  We were the 2nd group to go on the tour and the 1st group had just made it back from the "Backstage Tour" at which point I blurted out, "Hey, they made it back.  I'm glad this isn't like Willy Wonka, where people go missing in the chocolate river."  None of the staff found that funny, but the 40 year old bald father of two sitting next to us was dying.  

                                                          Courtesy of pinterest.com

So, we're off on the tour, and we enter the kitchen, which as you'd imagine looks like just about any kitchen at any restaurant that caters to fried food, but the staff was extremely nice and friendly.  It's at this point, that the Coordinator asks "Now, what items do you have in your home that are bigger here in our kitchen?"  To which, I immediately responded, "Umm the gigantic industrialized ice machine."  The Coordinator, stone-faced turns to me without cracking a smile, totally serious and says, "Yes, that absolutely correct."  The look on my wife's face was priceless.  To be fair, if I had an industrialized ice machine at my house, that made shaved ice, I'd probably try and find a way to work from home.  Tip of the cap to our guide, because he did not crack from his training the entire time.   

                                                          Courtesy of thirstynyc.com

We finish the tour and grab a milkshake as we leave.  If you've never been to a Chick-Fil-A A List dinner, I recommend you try it.  It's an experience.