It's Here! It's Finally Here!

Yesterday, we did the insane.

As you may know from Addie's post, Chick-fil-A is finally in town with a free-standing restaurant. Well, not in a part of town that is extremely close to us, but in my mind, 20 minutes is a whole lot closer than hours. The point is this: IT WAS IN EASY DRIVING DISTANCE!

So when Mr. Right came home from work, we decided to brave the craziness of opening day. Hey. It's Chick-fil-A. Anyone who has had their sandwich will understand this way of thinking. Trust me.

We turn the corner to find that there is a car line that is at least a quarter mile long, plus the parking lot to the stores of the mall that are near Chick-fil-A are full. Mr. Right looked at me and stated, "I told you it would be mayhem." Fortunately, he gets the Chick-fil-A thing with me. After waiting 15 minutes without moving much, I give up and figure that we'll have to hit Chick-fil-A when it's not so busy. As if there is ever a time like that... Whenever I've been to one, it's always busy.

We tried to eat a Johnny Carino's but we realized that we didn't have our gift card with us. So we decided on Taco Bell, which happened to be beside Chick-fil-A. At least we could look at the restaurant and smell the good aromas from it.

Did I tell you that a car line was wrapped around Chick-fil-A? Oh, and it was blocking off the entrance to any other business around it. Yeah, we're that serious about it here. Fortunately, after some time, a nice person let us cross into the TB parking lot, and when we pulled around, we noticed that the two businesses had conjoining parking lots, and the parking lot around Chick-fil-A was practically empty. Most of the people in the car line were going through the drive thru, so being the finicky food people we are with the desire for their delicious breaded chicken sandwich and knowing a good thing when we see it, we drove straight through to Chick-fil-A, parked the car and stood in line for about 20 minutes to get some of their yummy food.

And here is the good part. Our kids were so with us on this deal, they didn't complain one bit. They stood and joked with us, wore the hats they gave out and asked to go play in the play place. Of course, we said yes and wound up wearing the hats. We made our way to the counters with a festive mood around us. The customers were friendly and the employees were helpful and very talkative. Whenever we commented about how happy we were that there was a restaurant finally here, they would rejoice with us and then talked about the others that were coming to town too. (Addie, did you know that they are building a Chick-fil-A around the Ward Parkway mall and a Chick-fil-A near 135th and Metcalf? Praise God and pass the waffle fries!)

One thing that we noticed was that they brought in a "Grand Opening" team from Chick-fil-As all over. Mostly we saw team members from Texas, but there were others too. And they worked well with tthose who were hired from our area, teaching them how to do things right. Even though it seemed like mass chaos, it was organized chaos done with a smile and great customer service. And they were helpful with refilling drinks and cleaning up quickly and making it enjoyable for everyone.

We placed our orders, and the manager there turned and said with a big smile, "Thanks for getting into the spirit of things."

I turned to Mr. Right and saw that he had a hat on his head and then remembered that I had one on too. I just quipped, "Anything for Chick-fil-A!" That brought a small shout out for us. We got our food and even found a free booth in the middle of the eating area. The kids had a blast, we had our fix (for the moment) and the festivities of the evening stayed with us all the way home.

(I know that the big question around here is whether or not this Chick-fil-A would have sweet tea. I can calm your fears and tell you that YES! They had sweet tea! How do I know? They accidently gave my daughter sweet tea. You should have seen her face when she took that first drink! But they quickly remedied it and again with a "It's my pleasure" attitude. I think everyone will be most satisfied with this Chick-fil-A!)