chik-fil-a continuing restaurant expansion

News of the opening of the first Chik-Fil-A restaurant in Santa Fe at 2400 Cerrillos Road comes as the Atlanta-based company is moving towards its goal of being the third largest restaurant chain in the next two years.

The company currently has around 2,300 outlets nationally with annual revenues in excess of $9 million.

It is clearly far behind industry leaders Subway with more than 25,000 locations across the country, and McDonald’s with $326 billion in sales. But Chik-Fil-A’s revenue has doubled in the last 5 years as the company has also announced plans to build up to 100 new locations every year for the foreseeable future.

Although the company often builds new locations inside existing shopping centers and campus facilities, it also builds new structures from the ground up.

Those structures can include in-door playgrounds, patio seating, and double-drive outside order lanes on one side of the building, and pick-up windows on the other side.

A typical Chik-Fil-A measures around 6,000 square feet, although last year in Manhattan the company opened a 12,000 square-foot location.

With the majority of its stores located in the South, and some 600 outlets up and running in Georgia, Florida, and Texas alone, the company, according to sources, is poised for growth in states in the Mid-West and West.

Most known for its chicken sandwich, Chik-Fil-A’s unusual name is a Southern-twang play on the word “fillet.”

By Garry Boulard