McDonald's is largest fast food restaurant chain in the world. There are nearly 40,000 stores worldwide totaling $21 billion in annual sales. I used to eat at McD's a lot as a kid and young adult. My favorite meal was the breakfast combo Sausage, Egg, and Cheese McMuffin, hash brown, and juice. Ray Kroc founded McDonald's on April 15th, 1955. He was a big thinker from the beginning and pioneered the franchise model, where you have a system for each new store empowering the spirit of the entrepreneur and leveraging the success of duplication. The company knows how to advertise with their jingles being some of the most well-known on the planet. They know how to entertain, bringing playgrounds inside their restaurants to get more kids to bring their parents. The company knows how to grow and scale. If you ever study this, you will be impressed. So many cleaning companies adopt franchise models as well for the same reasons. Like McDonald's, they can scale to incredible proportions.

Truett Cathy founded Chick-Fil-A on May 23, 1946. He was also a visionary entrepreneur, but his focus was different. They have been open 9 years longer than McDonald's, but have only opened 2,600 stores and these are mostly in the United States. On the surface, it appears that McDonald's is right with it's slogans of "Have you had your break today?" and "I'm lovin' it!" People are taking their breaks and loving it with over 1 billion served! However, let's study this further. 

Truett Cathy was a christian man who decided to observe the Holy Sabbath and close his stores every Sunday. This was an unthinkable move as restaurants make a fortune on Sundays! Truett focused on customer service with a smile and treating every customer with love and respect. He wanted his team to love what they did as they knew they were not in the food business, rather the people business. They also get paid more per hour than McDonald's. Truett Cathy decided to only serve chicken and has become world-class at it. McDonald's serves beef and chicken. Personally, I love the Chick-Fil-A Spicy Chicken Deluxe with waffle fries. They also know how to advertise. Their 'Eat Mor Chikin' campaign is brilliant and hilarious, displaying poor-spelling cows begging us to eat chicken instead of beef. Truett Cathy's methods have created raving fans of his restaurants. In fact, there are loyal patrons willing to campout for free sandwiches at new store openings. It's called the "Chick-Fil-A First 100 Campout Giveaway". These patrons are proud of their affiliation with Chick-Fil-A. The only time I've ever seen anyone camping outside of McDonald's are the ones that live there. Oh, and I challenge you to drive by both of these fast food restaurants and see which drive through line is wrapped around the building!

The typical Chick-Fil-A store is open from 8 am to 9 pm, while McDonald's is open from 5:30 am to 11 pm. Thus, the typical Chick-Fil-A store is open 78 hours compared to McDonald's 124.5 hours per week. However, something isn't adding up. McDonald's stores are open 60% longer and they have 15 times as many stores in the world, yet their annual sales are only a pinch over 5 times more than Chick-Fil-A. Do you know why?

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