Visit a Chick-fil-A anywhere in the United States and you're likely to see a long line of customers patiently waiting to order the restaurant's flagship menu item.

There you guys go. Thank you so much.

You all have a great rest of your day. Thank you.

In part thanks to its famous chicken, today Chick-fil-A is the third largest U.S. restaurant chain by domestic sales.

We're still seeing tremendous growth in our business. So far this year we're up about 20%.

So, how did this private Atlanta-based fast food chain become one of the most popular restaurants in America?

This is the economics of Chick-fil-A.

Chick-fil-A has long had a unique approach to business that the company credits with its success.

From the beginning, Chick-fil-A's business was built on a recipe.

After testing hundreds of methods, restaurateur Truett Cathy developed a faster way to cook boneless chicken using a pressure cooker and peanut oil.

It's perfect. We've kept that locked away in a vault and we'll continue to use that same recipe.

None of the employees have access to it, so it's still shrouded in a lot of mystery.

There are recipe sites where you can try to recreate it, but they've never put it out officially.

The original chicken sandwich is the same today as in 1967.

A breaded breast of chicken, two pickles, both placed on a buttered toasted bun.

Chick-fil-A has long taken pride for its commitment to selling high-quality products.

In fact, Chick-fil-A's name is a take on Chicken Filet, with a capital A at the end symbolizing top quality.

While other fast food chains tend to expand their menu offerings over time to attract new customers,

Chick-fil-A's business model has always been to maintain a small menu focused on chicken sandwiches.

They like to say it's simple, so they want to keep customers knowing what's on that menu to be able to easily decipher what they want.

We think about the way that we serve guests, that consistency is really important, that we get hot sandwiches, cold salads, and just tasty products.

Customers seem to agree. Since its creation in 2015, the American Customer Satisfaction Index has been dominated by Chick-fil-A.

Chick-fil-A often rates very high, even though the service and the drive-thru can be slower.

People are very happy with the quality of the service they get in general.

Today, many Chick-fil-A restaurants use a practice known as upstream ordering, where an associate will take a customer's order while they're still waiting in line.

This started before the pandemic, but has really proved very important to the pandemic when they closed their dining rooms, which really meant the drive-thru is the major channel of sales.

So if you go to a Chick-fil-A now, in many locations you will see workers out in the drive-thru with tablets.

And so instead of speaking into a speaker box and kind of mumbling your order and it maybe getting screwed up, you're telling this person directly next to your car what you want.

To ensure that quality in every one of its locations,

Chick-fil-A uses a different franchise model than most other fast food chains.

Unlike most chains, where the franchisee covers most of the costs of opening the restaurant,

Chick-fil-A owns every one of its locations.

The company also selects the locations and builds the restaurants.

We really think that that's the key differentiator in the way that we operate.

We're not looking for a financial investor or people that want to buy a big market and open a bunch of stores.

Chick-fil-A states on their website, franchising is not an opportunity for passive financial investment, working from the sidelines or adding to a portfolio of business ventures.

Franchisees are called operators, and each operator is hand-picked by Chick-fil-A after a rigorous interview process.

Chick-fil-A likes to say it's about going to Harvard MBA.

It can take anywhere from 12 months to 24 months.

So you really have to want to do this and be willing to go through the initial paperwork, but then extensive interviews.

Out of the more than 8,000 applicants Chick-fil-A receives annually, the company only selects about 130 new operators a year.

That's an acceptance rate lower than Stanford.

One of the skills that we really look for is somebody that's really good at developing people.

A lot of the stores have over 100 employees.

They've got to be really, really good at pouring in and developing people and teams and leadership teams.

If selected, Chick-fil-A franchisees need only an initial investment of $10,000, which covers the franchise fee to become an operator.

That's much lower than the startup cost for a McDonald's franchise, which requires a $45,000 franchise fee as well as $1.3 to $2.3 million of additional investment.

If they're at 10 or 15 locations, it's hard to have that market presence and to really know their team members and the communities that we serve.

We've got a lot of interest to become operators.

We feel like that model is going to be really important.

It's what's gotten us to where we are.

Chick-fil-A credits this hands-on approach with the success of its restaurants, which on average make far more off of each location than their competition.

For years, Chick-fil-A's footprint was mostly in the Southeast, but today it can be found across the country.

They have about 2,600 restaurants throughout the country.

They're also located in Canada, and they are opening in Puerto Rico.

We're opening about 100 stores a year right now, and we've got a lot of growth potential here just domestically in the United States, but we're also looking international as well.

Since 2007, Chick-fil-A has nearly doubled its restaurant count to 2,598.

Compared to a lot of other chains, that's still slow, like a Chipotle is opening 200 restaurants a year.

No matter which Chick-fil-A location you eat at, the company says its values are reflected in its day-to-day operations.

It is a very close culture.

They're also invested in its values, which they do say are based on Judeo-Christian values, which you don't have to be a Christian to work there, but they do take some of these basic values of humility and generosity, and if you want to go to a prayer service while you're there, you certainly can.

From its inception, founder Truett Cathy's Christian faith played a major role in the company's business strategy.

It's why Chick-fil-A's are never open on Sunday, not just so workers can attend church, but also so they can rest in general.

We feel like we make up for the sales Monday through Saturday, and that anticipation of, ah, I can't get Chick-fil-A today, so I want to make sure to go first thing Monday morning.

It's also the reason the company has never gone public.

I don't think we will ever, actually I know we'll never go public, and there's not a real benefit for us to do that.

We've grown conservatively, and so we don't need a lot of investors or extra cash to go and to build new stores or new businesses.

Part of Cathy's values are reflected in how employees are treated and how they're expected to treat customers.

Thank you. My pleasure. Y'all have a great day.

Although you won't see it in restaurants where the employees are masked up,

Chick-fil-A has long asked employees to greet customers warmly with a smile.

Even if it's just a very small interaction, you can share a lot by just the smile the team member has with guests.

It's just a small little thing that we can do that makes a difference.

Occasionally, Chick-fil-A's values have attracted scrutiny, especially when the company's foundation donates to conservative groups or causes.

There's been some groups perceived as anti-gay, and this has attracted attention from progressive groups.

The company's foundation in the last year has focused its charitable giving on three different areas, homelessness, hunger, and education.

I think the most important thing for us being in the restaurant business is that we serve everybody.

My grandfather, I love how he talked about it with politics.

He would say, I'm not right wing or left wing, I'm the whole chicken.

When you go to headquarters in Atlanta, there is this rock with a quote from Truett that is displayed prominently that says what Chick-fil-A's corporate purpose.

It says, to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us, to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A.

I do think that reflects this very higher, noble sense of company self they have.

They believe they do more than just serve chicken sandwiches.

Thank you so much.

My pleasure. Have a nice one.

Bye.