New York’s elites are outraged at an invasion that threatens the “progressive” bastion. The city, which prides itself as the most diverse in the world, is being taken over not by ISIS, Russia or militant Palestinians. No, people from high-brow writers to the former mayor are upset with (wait for it) Chick-fil-A.
By Dwight Widaman, Editor
The southern restaurant chain, operated on Christian values and southern hospitality, has won the taste buds of New Yorkers and snooty leftists just can’t stand it.
In a The New Yorker Magazine column, Dan Piepenbring examines how New Yorkers have taken to Chick-fil-A and its signature sandwich. He simply could not believe what he saw on the day he visited the new five-story (yes we said 5-story) location in lower Manhattan. Stretching around the block were customers in line not to purchase a $1000 iPhone, but chicken sandwiches and waffle fries.
Piepenbring writes that the company feels like an invasion because of its “pervasive Christian traditionalism.” He points to the company’s stand for traditional marriage and how in 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasio actually proposed a boycott.
The ensuing boycott backfired on the mayor – the man whose job it is to encourage new business in the city and reduce crime had met his match – the taste bud. New Yorkers, perhaps tired of the culture wars dictating what they could eat and how much soda they can responsibly drink, readily embraced the delectable southern chicken recipes.
Piepenbring is looking for evil Christian evangelism behind every glass of yummy lemonade writing that “proselytism thrums below the surface of the Fulton Street restaurant, which has the ersatz homespun ambiance of a megachurch.”
He also suggests that Chick-fil-A’s emphasis on the local community, which is one of the company standards at all of its retail locations, has an ulterior motive. And he’s critical of the homespun personal customer service and of what David Farmer, Chick-fil-A’s vice president of restaurant experience, recently told Buzzfeed. Farmer stated how they try to have a “pit crew efficiency, but where you feel like you just got hugged in the process.”
Hugs? New York? Heaven forbid!
Piepenbring is also sick of seeing the chain’s “EAT MOR CHIKIN” advertising campaign that is on every bus and subway car. He laments that “The joke is that the cows are out of place in New York – a winking acknowledgment that Chick-fil-A, too, does not quite belong here.”
Piepenbring ends by saying, “There’s something especially distasteful about what Chick-fil-A is doing” – and he encourages New Yorkers to stand strong and boycott the chain.
It seems, however, that multitudes of New Yorkers clearly don’t agree.
If you are in New York make sure to stop by one of the chains 12, yes 12, locations. But you might have to stand in line. New Yorkers are head-over-heels for what we in Kansas City and the rest of the country already knew. Good food by a company that shares our values trumps the safe space New York liberals want to retreat to when threatened by a chicken sandwich and lemonade.
Yes, the company founded by Truett Cathy has done what the British could not do in the War of Independence–hold onto the City of New York.
Alexander Hamilton would be proud. Maybe the battle will be immortalized in a play on Broadway.
