I've been anxiously awaiting this week for months now. A Chick-fil-A is opening in my town, Warrenton, Virginia. Chick-fil-A, for those not in the know, has: 1) the best chicken sandwhich (or nuggets) on the planet 2) the best customer service of any quick food chain (or just about any restaurant chain in any category) 3) a quirky and large group of 'raving fans', who are willing to travel some distance to attend a grand opening.
All of this creates a perfectly wonderful storm for a blogger who follows companies and products that inspire Consumer Passion. And before I head out the door to capture some video of people camping out for the grand opening - in the rain - I want to mention a fabulous event the restaurant hosted last night.
I was invited to take part in their Premier Night Dinner, a sort of unnofficial 'first serving' of food from the brand new restaurant. Everyone was super, super nice. Dinner and way too much dessert was served by the staff. Free stuff was given away. And it made me wonder if any other fast food chain does this sort of thing for openings ... or could do this sort of thing. I wonder if Burger Kind and McDonalds and Wendy's could count on numerous people showing up, truly excited that the restaurant was opening ... truly thrilled it was now part of the community ... and truly nuts for the food. It felt like a family reunion. And it was a small taste of the magic that is Chick-fil-A.
Here are two short video clips I took at the Premier Night Dinner, with my Nokia N95, streaming to Qik.com. Clip #1 is here .... clip #2 is here. We don't have 3G cell coverage in my area yet, so live video streaming is sketchy at best. But Qik allows me to use my new Nokia smart phone to stream fairly high quality video directly to their platform, and it then is archived for later viewing. I"ll be streaming additional video this afternoon, evening ... and early tommorrow morning, as the grand opening takes place at 6:30am ET. They give away a year's worth of meals to the first 100 people in line. Apparently, there's a number of tents already set up. So I better be on my way ....
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