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It’s been a rollercoaster of a month for the fried chicken sandwich brand known as much for its fried chicken sandwiches as it is for a history of supporting anti-LGBTQ causes in the United States. First, Chick-fil-A announced it was expanding into Europe. Then it quietly opened a first site in Reading. Eight days later, it emerged that the landlord, The Oracle Shopping Centre, would not be renewing its lease, after the six-month pilot period had expired.
Now, as reported by Pink News, it appears the brand has also opened a restaurant in the Scottish highlands, without anyone (read: the media) noticing. Until now.
At the Macdonald Aviemore Resort, 30 miles south east of Inverness, a Chick-Fil-A branch opened approximately three weeks ago with “scant fanfare.”
A Macdonald Hotel spokesperson confirmed to local paper, the Strathspey and Badenoch Herald on 23 October that Chick-fil-A had opened location at the resort.
“Chick-fil-A has already proved very popular with our guests and we are happy to be able to provide this quality food expense as an option,” they are reported to have said.
Chick-fil-A was founded by Truett Cathy, who opened a diner in Atlanta in 1946, an entrepreneur known, according to the brand’s website, “for having a keen business sense, a work ethic forged during the Depression, and a personal and business philosophy based on biblical principles.” It is those principles which means that still today the company closes on Sundays and which are used as justification for its million-dollar support for groups that opposed same-sex marriage, and for a (now-dissolved) group that promoted conversion therapy, a bogus — and discredited — ideology that casts homosexuality as a curable illness.
It is America’s third-largest fast food chain by sales — behind only McDonald’s and Starbucks.
How its expansion into Europe plays out remains uncertain.
