While #TheChickening continues to happen at every Popeyes restaurant across the country, at least one competitor in the great chicken sandwich battle of 2019 has found a way to change their image from a public relations standpoint—sorta.
Business Insider reports that after facing years of criticism and negative publicity, chicken sandwich OG Chick-fil-A announced Monday that it would no longer be making charitable donations to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army—two organizations with decidedly anti-LGBTQ stances. The company said in a press release that it would “deepen its giving to a smaller number of organizations working exclusively in the areas of education, homelessness and hunger.”
A company representative said in a statement to Business Insider, “We made multiyear commitments to both organizations, and we fulfilled those obligations in 2018. Moving forward you will see that the Chick-fil-A Foundation will support the three specific initiatives of homelessness, hunger and education.”
In 2012, the company stopped making donations to several other controversial groups, but continued donating to both Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army until last year.
More from BI:
Chick-fil-A said that for 2020 it has committed $9 million each to those three initiatives: education, homelessness, and hunger. The company said that it was expanding partnerships with the education nonprofit Junior Achievement USA and the homeless-youth organization Covenant House International and that it would dedicate $25,000 to a local food bank following each new Chick-fil-A opening.
This all sounds well and good, but I wonder if the fact that Popeyes has yet to remove their foot from the collective chicken industry’s neck was in any part a small motivation for Chick-fil-A to do the right thing.
After all, you gotta sell a lot of chicken sandwiches to stay in business.