Our Chick-fil-A Story

I remember going to West Shore Plaza as a kid with my grandfather to enjoy Chick-fil-A Sandwiches – and that amazing LEMONADE! There was (and still is) nothing quite like it. This was back in the 80’s when the only place to get The Original Chicken Sandwich was inside shopping malls.

Truett Cathy had the revolutionary idea to serve fried chicken on a bun, without bones, at shopping malls (where people went to shop, not eat) but then close on the busiest day, Sunday! Somehow he created a real recipe for success and in the process has touched countless lives with great food and humble service. Chick-fil-A’s expansion into free-standing restaurants was perhaps inevitable.

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Jodi and Jason Dittman for many years and have always been so proud of them as the operators of Tampa’s first free-standing Chick-fil-A.

In 2014, Jason told me about their plans to demolish their store to re-build a bigger, better, state-of-the-art restaurant. After the shock wore off from my realization that there would be no chicken sandwiches for 5 months, I said “hey we’ve GOT to do a documentary on this!”

So we created several short, fun construction update videos keeping fans engaged on Facebook while they were closed. During those 5 months, the videos helped increase their page following from 1500 to over 3000 fans culminating in the end with the short documentary film that I’d always wanted to do!