Looking for our guest website?
What Are the 5 Critical Success Factors?
The 5 Critical Success Factors are the five factors that Operators have said are foundational to building the Chick-fil-A business over time. This proven tool has served the business for more than 35 years, giving Operators, their leaders and their support teams a mechanism and a common approach to pull up and think about the entire business.
Factor Definitions
It’s important to note that order matters. It all starts with Leadership, then attracting and retaining the right Talent, which fuels a positive Customer Experience, followed by Sales & Brand Growth and financial resources to steward well and invest back into the business.
Leadership: The leadership of Operators is Chick-fil-A's competitive advantage. Leadership encompasses the indispensable role the Operator and the leaders they bring around them play in the business. This includes setting vision, creating a healthy culture, building structure, as well as the capacity to execute on these areas across the Restaurant.
Talent: Attracting, retaining and developing the right talent who will help the Restaurant thrive.
Customer Experience: Consistent execution in delivering a Clean & Safe Environment, Great Food, Fast & Accurate Service and Genuine Hospitality to win the hearts of Customers.
Sales & Brand Growth: Local and market-level marketing efforts to maintain momentum for the brand and the business.
Financial Stewardship: Taking care of your financial resources through wise investment and appropriate risk.
Winning Hearts Every Day is Chick-fil-A’s primary Restaurant-level Customer care strategy that will help fulfill our Shared Vision to be the world’s most caring company. This strategy replaces the Create Raving Fans® strategy and serves as a way to remind Operators and Team Members to stay focused on what matters most to our Customers.
The Winning Hearts Every Day strategy is composed of four key focus areas and fundamentals.
Including Team Member hygiene and restaurant cleanliness.
Added as a response to changes since COVID-19, offering Customers a clean and safe environment is paramount to caring.
We measure performance in this area using the key metric:
Cleanliness
Pursuing excellence in food safety and quality.
Providing safe, high-quality, crave-able food to Customers is a key fundamental in Customer care within the Winning Hearts Every Day strategy. Meeting quality requirements and serving food that is safe to eat all day, every day, develops trust with Customers and shows them we care.
To measure performance in this area, we use these key metrics:
Food Safety Performance Level | Taste of food | Temperature of food | Portion size
Including fast service and order accuracy.
Delivering accurate Customer orders quickly is another Customer care fundamental of the strategy. By executing this fundamental with excellence, we let Customers know we value their time and their business—and fast and accurate service is one reason why Customers keep coming back, specifically in the drive-thru.
To measure performance in this area, we use these key metrics:
Fast service | Ease of placing order | Order accuracy
Which emphasizes hospitality and guest recovery.
Serving from the heart; treating all Customers with honor, dignity and respect; anticipating their needs; and resolving their problems are just some of the ways to execute on the fourth Customer care focus area.
To measure performance in this area, we use these key metrics:
Attentive and courteous employees | Problem resolution
How we consistently deliver to Win Hearts Every Day.
Pursue Mastery
No organization will drift to elite levels of execution. Individuals must commit to the journey. Mastery is a level of skill in which the desired behavior is consistent, flawlessly executed and second nature. Mastery must not be the expectation—it should always be the goal. Lofty goals inspire. Unachievable expectations discourage, deflate, and lead to disengagement.
Own the Numbers
Our Team Members and fellow Team Leaders are the ones who drive the numbers that help our Restaurant reach its goals. However, many of them may not even know what numbers are important for their roles right now. It’s up to us to teach and then empower our Restaurant and team to own what they have learned. Only then will our improvement efforts accelerate.
Help Others Win
This is the most culture-shifting of the three fundamentals. Pursuing Mastery and Owning the Numbers impact primarily “my” work; however, when everyone agrees to serve others on the journey, the ethos of the organization shifts. Training, encouragement, and accountability shift from being the leader’s responsibility to everyone’s job.
All Winning Hearts Every Day resources have been made available for Operators, Licensed Restaurants and their select Team Leaders on the Winning Hearts Every Day website. This website houses:
An introduction to Winning Hearts Every Day
Courses for each of the 4 Focus Areas
A course on the Fundamentals of Execution
Additional resources, such as a one-pager, pocket card, Restaurant posters and a Pathway training plan for Team Members
Each course contains a Learning Guide, topical episodes of 20 minutes or less and bonus content. Episodes highlight leaders from both within and outside Chick-fil-A as they share inspiration, expertise, business tools and best practices for executing Winning Hearts Every Day in the Restaurant.
Operators and their select Restaurant Leaders are asked to complete all of the Winning Hearts Every Day courses by the end of Q1 2022.
A custom-built training platform was developed and iterated on as a digital learning platform that gives Team Members a go-to place for finding training content on any mobile device – wherever and whenever they need it.
Here you can find all requirements, recipes, and procedures for any, and all Chick-fil-A products and service requirements.