Chick-fil-A gives free food to motorists stranded in Southern snowstorm
By Todd Starnes
Published January 29, 2014
FoxNews.com

A snowstorm in the South is about as rare as a glass of unsweetened tea at a church supper. Folks around Birmingham, Ala. weren’t all that worried though. The storm was only supposed to dust the city – not even enough powder for a Southern snowman.

So when the first snowflakes began to fall, no one paid all that much attention. But then, the flakes kept falling. Before too long folks in places like Hoover and Inverness realized it was much more than a dusting. By that point, it was too late for anyone to do anything.

Icy interstates and highways soon became clogged with cars and trucks. Thousands of motorists soon found themselves stranded with nowhere to go – including many stuck on Highway 280.

But a good number of those stranded motorists were able to find shelter in the storm thanks to the kindness and generosity of Chick-fil-A restaurant employees and the restaurant's owner, Mark Meadows.
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Some of the drivers had been stuck in their cars for nearly seven hours without any food or water. So the staff of the Chick-fil-A decided to lend a helping hand.

“We cooked several hundred sandwiches and stood out on both sides of 280 and handed out the sandwiches to anyone we could get to – as long as we had food to give out.”
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Audrey said they were especially surprised that the sandwiches were free. Why not make some extra money during the storm? It’s not like anyone could go to another restaurant. Chick-fil-A had a captive crowd of hungry customers. So why did they give away their food?

“This company is based on taking care of people and loving people before you’re worried about money or profit,” Audrey told me. “We were just trying to follow the model that we’ve all worked under for so long and the model that we’ve come to love. There was really nothing else we could have done but try to help people any way we could.”
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But Chick-fil-A’s generosity didn’t stop there.

“We opened up our dining room to anyone who wanted to sleep on a bench or a booth,” Audrey told me.
And this morning, the weary staff members fired up their ovens and began preparing chicken biscuits. The only thing that is closed – is Chick-fil-A’s cash register.

“We’re not open for business,” she said. ‘We’re just feeding people who are hungry.”
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http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/01/2...hern-snowstorm/

An update. I found this editorial online in the NY Post.

If the food and shelter for stranded motorists were under the aegis of government bureaucrats, the committee would still be debating which check boxes to put on the required forms.

Chick-Fil-A values
By Post Editorial Board
January 30, 2014 | 11:52pm

Remember how liberals pounced on Chick-Fil-A’s owner/president for saying more or less what Barack Obama said in his 2008 campaign for president? That marriage was between a man and a woman?

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel declared “Chick-Fil-A’s values are not Chicago values.” Boston Mayor Thomas Menino vowed to block the chain from coming to Beantown. Gotham’s then-City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, demanded Chick-Fil-A’s one New York store be sent packing.

Well, this week Chick-Fil-A values were back in the news. When the deep South was paralyzed by snow that stranded motorists for hours and forced others to abandon cars, Chick-Fil-A moved in.

In Birmingham, Ala., a Chick-Fil-A store began cooking hundreds of chicken sandwiches and handing them out for free to stranded motorists along the highway. Anyone who needed a warm place to sleep was invited to do so at Chick-Fil-A for as long as needed. The next morning, workers prepared fresh chicken biscuits — which, again, they distributed free.

Why would Chick-Fil-A not capitalize on being the only locally available food source and turn a quick profit? Because, says store manager Audrey Pitt, “this company is based on taking care of people and loving people before you’re worried about money or profit.” Indeed, company CEO Dan Cathy makes no bones about running a family-owned business based “on values rooted in the Bible.”

No, we sure wouldn’t want to have companies with values like those Chick-Fil-A demonstrated in Birmingham opening in our neighborhoods, would we?


http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/chick-fil-a-values/