Why Chick-fil-A Says “My Pleasure”
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, if you have ever ordered at Chick-fil-A, you know the reply almost by heart: “My pleasure.” But this chicken giant didn't come up with its famous catchphrase.
The phrase traces back to a visit founder Truett Cathy made to the Ritz-Carlton, where he noticed how consistently employees used those same two words with guests. The language was part of the hotel’s service standard, and it stayed with him long after he left. Cathy later adopted the phrase inside Chick-fil-A, where it became a defining part of the company’s culture. Horst Schulze, the co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton, shares the story.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.2 | And we continue with our American stories. |
| 0:18.2 | And up next a story about a founder. |
| 0:24.2 | And we love to tell founder's stories here on the show. |
| 0:31.7 | We love to tell stories of people who turn nothing into something. And here, the storyteller is Horst Schulze, who co-founded the Rich Carlton Hotels in 1983 here in America. And this story has a lot to do with service. |
| 0:41.1 | 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 and |
| 1:13.6 | they make a decision about you. So it starts with a great welcome, welcome. And then it |
| 1:20.6 | continues with complying to the guest wishes. And that complying is very simply that. |
| 1:30.6 | I'm in that moment, it's not about me anymore. |
| 1:31.9 | It's not about my company. |
| 1:33.0 | It's about my customer. |
| 1:40.5 | I'm now here to help that customer to make the right decision for him or her. |
| 1:43.8 | That's how I'm complying. |
... |
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