Camping Out By Chick-Fil-A

Here's a funny thing: until this morning, there was a tent city in front of the new Chick-Fil-A that went up at the corner of the two main drags near my house. Well, fine, so it was more like a tent hamlet, but still, that's a curious thing to see in front of a restaurant. Especially a fast food restaurant. The only time I see a line like that at McDonald's or Taco Bell is on New Year's, when the wait at Taco Bell was about 20 minutes for the first one we tried, and they had run out of food, they claimed (we went to a second franchise and they served us, though they were out of beans). But tents! Never! It was like a really boring tailgate party! There were all sorts of grills and lawn chairs and what looked suspiciously like violations of open container laws, and then no game at the end. Those souls are braver than I am, that's for sure.

It was such a mystery. Why tents? Why Chick-Fil-A? Surely if they were hungry, they could have just gone to any of the assorted fast food restaurants nearby? The local high school has an open campus lunch, meaning the students can leave, so the place is fraught with sandwich shops and burger joints. Surely if they needed housing, they might have chosen to take a room in one of the cheapish hotels half a mile down the road? They all looked prosperous enough with their posh tents and their North Face fleeces, warming their hands around a barbeque.

Had I checked Wikipedia, earlier, I might have learned that there's a whole traveling group called "The Herd" who attend grand openings of as many Chick-Fil-As as possible. I might have learned about the First Hundred promotion whereby the dedicated first hundred people to enter the doors of a new Chick-Fil-A get a coupon for a free combo meal every week. Ah, if only I had done my (questionable) research, I would not have been so puzzled and amused.

Anyway, the grand opening was this morning, and there was some poor soul dressed as a cow in a nightgown dragging a billboard around through the morning frost. The tents had all vanished like John Edwards' hopes after New Hampshire. I'd imagine the camping out part was more a draw than the food - I don't know anyone whose passion for chicken sandwiches would normally convince them to wait around in thirty degree weather for hours and hours. Maybe I should have told Biceps about it, though. He appreciates a good piece of chicken, as I am reminded every afternoon when he starts to heat up his Tupperware of pasty chicken and smooshy peas. I really hope that the genuinely homeless people in the area found out about the promotion - they're a lot more in need of a chicken combo meal than the people I saw making merry in the early evening in the parking lot of the brand new Chick-Fil-A. Ah well.

I shouldn't mock. If they ever offered a nifty promotion for a vegetarian fast food chain (oh, I have high hopes), I'd probably be out there in my sleeping bag with my little camping lantern too.