Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People: Doing Business the Chick-fil-A Way / Cathy, Truett

Truett Cathy is a real-life Horatio Alger story. He grew up in a boarding house his mother operated, where he learned the principles of hard work, fairness, honesty, loyalty, and respect. When he opened a small restaurant in 1946 with his brother Ben, he put those principles to work and immediately began to experience their rewards.

Twenty-one years later Truett Cathy opened the first Chick-fil-A restaurant, which was unique in America in two ways: it served the first boneless breast chicken sandwich, and it was the first fast-food restaurant to operate in a shopping mall. Today there are more than 1,000 Chick-fil-A restaurants with more than $1 billion in sales annually.

Truett Cathy has achieved his success while living the life of a servant leader. From the age of eight, when he iced down the Cokes he was selling at his front-yard drink stand and saw the resulting growth in sales, he has sought ways to please customers. That attitude is evident today at each Chick-fil-A restaurant, where Operators and team members have been inspired by the founder's commitment to others.

Truett Cathy's commitment reaches far beyond the people who work and eat in his restaurants. Through the WinShape Centre Foundation, funded by Chick-fil-A, he operates foster homes for more than 120 children, sponsors a summer camp for more than 1,600 children, and has provided college scholarships for more than 15,000 students.

In Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People, Truett Cathy challenges readers to focus on people and principles. Then good success will surely follow.