The Story of How Chick-fil-A Borrowed “My Pleasure” from a Luxury Hotel
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, the origins of Chick-fil-A’s “my pleasure” catchphrase trace back to 2001. According to Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy, it began when he visited a Ritz-Carlton luxury hotel, co-founded by his friend Horst Schulze. Here's Horst with the story.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:14.3 | And we continue with our American stories. And up next a story about a founder. |
| 0:24.3 | And we love to tell founder's stories here on the show. we love to tell founder's stories here on the show. |
| 0:31.8 | We love to tell stories of people who turn nothing into something. And here, the storyteller is Horsholtzsche, who co-founded the Rich Carlton Hotels in 1983 here in America. And this story has a lot to do with service. |
| 0:41.2 | It has a lot to do with customers. And it has to do also with a fellow Atlanta founder, |
| 0:47.9 | Truitt Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, and where the phrase, my pleasure, came from. |
| 0:55.0 | We all talk about service. |
| 0:57.0 | Let me define service for a moment. |
| 1:00.0 | It starts the instant you make contact. |
| 1:03.0 | It doesn't start a second later. |
| 1:06.0 | It starts, in fact, within nine feet. |
| 1:09.0 | Why? |
| 1:10.0 | Because within nine feet, you make decisions about somebody |
| 1:14.1 | and they make a decision about you. So it starts with a great welcome, welcome. And then it |
| 1:20.5 | continues with complying to the guest wishes. And that complying is very simply that. I'm in that moment it's not about me anymore. It's not about my |
| 1:31.6 | company. It's about my customer. I'm now here to help that customer to make it the right |
| 1:38.2 | decision for them or her. That's how I'm complying. I'm here to be an assistant to that guest to make a |
| 1:48.6 | great decision for themselves. And then it ends by saying farewell. That is service. Welcome, |
| 1:55.9 | comply, farewell. Now, and people talk about a great service, ask them to define it. You haven't even given it thoughts what it is. |
| 2:03.6 | That's why you don't receive it. |
| 2:05.6 | They receive it if somebody happens to, if you happen to be lucky and you happen to hit a nice person. |
| 2:12.6 | Not by the sign of the organization. |
... |
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