The Fast Food Chain That Once Claimed It Invented The Chicken Sandwich

"We didn't invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich." This Chick-fil-A slogan has been seen in the recent past, and some have tied it to the Cathy family's Christian faith, but is the claim that this fast food giant "invented" the chicken sandwich true? Not so fast. While other Chick-fil-A controversies may be rooted in misunderstanding, there's no glossing over the fact that any claim of CFA patenting a fried chicken sandwich is, shall we say, an untruth.

When S. Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A, opened the Dwarf Grill restaurant in Georgia in 1946, he revolutionized quick-frying chicken breasts in a pressure cooker, allowing them to be produced quickly enough for fast food consumption. Today, the rechristened Dwarf House restaurant still exists under the Chick-fil-A umbrella, just like other spinoffs such as the tropical-themed Truett's Luau. But, regardless of what you call any of the Cathy-derived restaurants, they didn't pioneer the chicken sandwich or even the idea of serving it to the public.

That honor perhaps belongs to several southern Black-owned family restaurants dating back as far as the beginning of the 20th century, although the tradition could conceivably have started even earlier. Many forms of mass-market fried chicken handhelds, including trendy "Nashville hot" sandos, can directly trace their lineage back to the Black American community, which gets precious little credit for innovation and culinary chops. So, no, Chick-fil-A didn't invent the chicken sandwich ... just the Original Chicken Sandwich on its contemporary menu.

The internet is an amazing place to be a fast food lover, with hints for how to order Chick-fil-A's off-menu ice cream sandwich, for instance. It's also a hotbed of misinformation, as seen in several Reddit threads concerning the origin of the American chicken sandwich. "TIL that Chick-Fil-A actually invented the chicken sandwich," one such thread reads. The ensuing comments were skeptical, at least, with many doubting that no one had thought to put fried chicken in a bun before S. Truett Cathy came along. "Did Chick-fil-a really invent the chicken sandwich or is it all corporate lies?" asks another Redditor. There, one commenter shared the anecdotal story of a farmer grandparent enjoying homemade chicken sandwiches in the 1920s. 

On a thread in r/AskHistorians, one sage commenter broke down the matter, which really comes down to semantics: "There's probably some obscure reasoning by which you can justify this statement (I think in this case they're meant to have sold the first chicken sandwich in a fast food restaurant) – but no, they're definitely not the first to put chicken between two slices of bread."

The only defensible way that Chick-fil-A can assert its ownership of "the chicken sandwich" is when it comes to its particular sammie: a pressure-cooked breast served in a drive-thru. Chick-fil-A's Original Chicken Sandwich is, indeed, its own thing. By that same token, McDonald's could be said to have invented the Big Mac, but definitely not the hamburger. Despite a misleading claim, it's apparent that Chick-fil-A's sandwich, while delicious, is not the progenitor that some think it is.