More restaurant business

Seeing how successful the original was – at least in making for a good story – a political activist is trying to recreate the grassroots magic which punctuated the Chick-fil-A business surge in 2012.

The brainchild of Eric Odom, who is the Managing Director of a media site called the Liberty News Network and also acts as the Director of Interactive Media for Grassfire Lab, the intent of Chick-Phil-A Day seems to be recreating the same atmosphere as the 2012 protests in the same locale, desptite the fact Chick-fil-A has nothing to do with the Robertson family and isn’t an active participant in the protest. Odom notes this on the Facebook page announcing the effort, which is scheduled for Tuesday, January 21.

Obviously this comes in the wake of the entire ‘Duck Dynasty’ controversy, and participants are urged to “Stand For Free Speech. Sit For Good Food.” They’re also asked to arrive in Duck Commander or camoflauge clothing. As of this writing, over 55,000 have signed up with earlier press reports claiming a number in the 45,000 range. So it’s growing rapidly.

But there are a number of differences between the Odom effort and the 2012 protest, which was led by onetime Presidential candidate and media personality Mike Huckabee. For one, Huckabee’s call had a very short lead time of about a week, so the idea was fresh on people’s minds; moreover, it was in the middle of the summer of a presidential election year, when activists are most rabid.  This effort is being put together far more slowly at a time when news is slow and people are still in holiday mode.

So I’m not sure just what to expect considering how quickly the Phil Robertson story blew up, and maybe the question is why not support Cracker Barrel since they readjusted their stance on the Duck Dynasty items after consumer blowback. Obviously the effect is more noticeable at a Chick-Fil-A, though, and the restaurants are far more common. (In this area, the closest Cracker Barrel is about 75 miles away. One was rumored to be planned for Salisbury but it apparently fell through.)

I sort of suspect that people may have moved on to other diversions once the holidays are over because reruns of ‘Duck Dynasty’ are still being aired and the newest Season 5 episodes – all but one of which were already taped with Phil Robertson – premiere January 15. There may be a small bump in the traffic for Chick-fil-A but I don’t think it will be anywhere near as large as the August 2012 protests were.

And that’s a good thing, because the innocent lady who happens to have a very similar Twitter handle to the event name (as I found out when I did the Google search for the term) will probably like not to have tons of traffic.

One thought on “More restaurant business”

  1. Wasn’t the original surge a result of some attack on the restaurant because of the something the founder said? Or was it the attempted shooting, I can’t remember.

    Either way, I think trying to make it a thing again is silly.

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