fast casual restaurant
A fast casual restaurant, found primarily in the United States and Canada, does not offer full table service, but advertises higher quality food than fast food restaurants, with fewer frozen or processed ingredients. It is an intermediate conce ...
Auburn, Alabama
Auburn is a city in Lee County, Alabama, United States. It is the largest city in eastern Alabama, with a 2020 population of 76,143. It is a principal city of the Auburn-Opelika Metropolitan Area. The Auburn-Opelika, AL MSA with a population ...
. To date, the chain consists of over 280
franchise
Franchise may refer to:
Business and law
* Franchising, a business method that involves licensing of trademarks and methods of doing business to franchisees
* Franchise, a privilege to operate a type of business such as a cable television p ...
restaurants and stores in 19 different
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...
s.
History
The company started with Stacy Brown and her husband, Kevin, who died in 2015 from colon cancer. Stacy Brown, who was unemployed, divorced, and raising three children, started selling her homemade chicken salad door-to-door in Auburn, Alabama. With the health department prohibiting the sale of foods cooked in one's home, the Browns devised a plan to open a restaurant.
In 2016, Chicken Salad Chick was ranked #37 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the U.S.
The restaurant is partially owned by private equity firm Brentwood Associates, who also have investments in
Blaze Pizza
Blaze Pizza is a Pasadena, California-based fast-casual dining restaurant chain that serves pizza. Founded in 2011 by Elise and Rick Wetzel of Wetzel's Pretzels, Blaze Pizza was modeled after Chipotle's made-to-order approach to serving custom ...
and
Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar
Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar is an American casual dining restaurant chain. As of February 6, 2022, Lazy Dog operates 40 restaurants across eight states: California, Florida, Nevada, Texas, Colorado, Illinois, Georgia and Virginia.
The restaurant's n ...
.
Fare
The restaurant serves fifteen styles of
chicken salad
Chicken salad is any salad with chicken as a main ingredient. Other common ingredients may include mayonnaise, hard-boiled egg, celery, onion, pepper, pickles (or pickle relish) and a variety of mustards.
Description
In Canada and the United S ...
, served on bread, lettuce as a scoop with crackers, or in a leafy green salad. It also provides chicken salad by the pound for
take-out
A take-out or takeout (U.S., Canada, and the Philippines); carry-out or to-go (Scotland and some dialects in the U.S. and Canada); takeaway (England, Wales, Australia, Lebanon, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionally in Nort ...
and
delicatessen
Traditionally, a delicatessen or deli is a retail establishment that sells a selection of fine, exotic, or foreign prepared foods. Delicatessen originated in Germany (original: ) during the 18th century and spread to the United States in the m ...
The Chicken Salad Chick Foundation was founded by the company in August 2014 and is a partner with the American Cancer Society. The foundation also partners with
food bank
A food bank is a non-profit, charitable organization that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough to avoid hunger, usually through intermediaries like food pantries and soup kitchens. Some food banks distribute food direct ...
s in communities with Chicken Salad Chick restaurant locations in efforts to nourish people in need. For example, in 2014, the foundation donated over $6,000 to the Chattanooga Area Food Bank. Since the foundation's inception, Chicken Salad Chick restaurants have served to generate "...more than $100,000 in donations to fight cancer and hunger in the communities it serves". Barclay Smith is the director of the foundation.
List of casual dining restaurant chains
This is a list of casual dining restaurant chains around the world, arranged in alphabetical order. A casual dining restaurant is a restaurant that serves moderately priced food in a casual atmosphere. Except for buffet-style restaurants and, mor ...