Chick-fil-A shocks critics, opens on Sunday to serve free food to blood donors
Chick-fil-A served up its famous filets and iced tea on Sunday in response to the brutal terrorist attack on an Orlando gay club. The Chick-fil-A in Orlando, Florida called its workers in to provide food to anyone who took part in a blood drive to aid victims and local medical care facilities.
Chick-Fil-A cow toy photo/Phroziac via wikimedia commons
“While we have a corporate policy that firmly states we are closed for business on Sundays, there have been rare cases that move our local operators to respond with food donations to help communities in need. The events in Orlando stirred our local restaurant owners and their teams to band together to provide nourishment to first responders as well as volunteers who donated blood,” a spokeswoman for Chick-fil-A told The Huffington Post.
“We love our city and love the people in our community,” a team member wrote on the restaurant’s Facebook page.
“We are appalled by the senseless crime that was committed this weekend, but we are part of a community that stands strong and stands together,” they wrote on Facebook.
Omar Mateen praised Islamic State and headed into the gay club Pulse, killing 49 and injuring many more.
The chain’s owners, the Cathy family, are outspoken Christians and have maintained an official policy of never opening their stores on a Sunday since they went into business in 1946.
Chick-fil-A locations around the country have held blood drives as part of their regular community service. The Chick-fil-A store in Hurst, Texas, has held a “Be the Match” event for three years, encouraging people to become blood and bone marrow donors.
CEO Dan Cathy called “the Biblical definition of the family unit” has made it the target of backlash across the nation. Numerous cities and their leaders have said, Christian values or no, they don’t want the stores in their cities.
DC Mayor Vincent Gray called the store’s signature Southern chicken breast filet “hate chicken.”
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio groused last month that, while the store has “a legal right” to serve chicken in the Big Apple, he would urge a boycott of their stores.
NATIONAL SAME SEX KISS DAY at Chick-fil-A at 825 Ellsworth Drive in Silver Spring, Maryland on Friday afternoon, 3 August 2012 by Elvert Barnes Protest Photography
