The company started with Stacy Brown, who was unemployed, divorced, and raising three children. She started selling her homemade chicken salad door-to-door in Auburn, Alabama. With the health department prohibiting the sale of foods cooked in one's home, Stacy and her future husband Kevin Brown devised a plan to open a restaurant.[4][5][6]
In 2016, Chicken Salad Chick was ranked #37 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the U.S.[7][8]
A scoop of the Classic Carol at a Chicken Salad Chick restaurant
The restaurant serves fifteen styles of chicken salad, served on bread, lettuce as a scoop with crackers, or in a leafy green salad.[6][10] It also provides chicken salad by the pound for take-out and delicatessen-style sandwiches and side dishes.[6]
The restaurant's menu includes pimento cheese, egg salad, broccoli salad, fruit salad, macaroni and cheese, pasta salad, and grape salad. Daily soup specials include tomato bisque, broccoli & cheese, chicken & artichoke florentine, and chicken tortilla; loaded potato soup is available daily.[11]
Philanthropy
The Chicken Salad Chick Foundation was founded by the company in August 2014 and is a partner with the American Cancer Society.[12] The foundation also partners with food banks in communities with Chicken Salad Chick restaurant locations in efforts to nourish people in need.[12] For example, in 2014, the foundation donated over $6,000 to the Chattanooga Area Food Bank.[13] Since the foundation's inception, Chicken Salad Chick restaurants have served to generate "...more than $100,000 in donations to fight cancer and hunger in the communities it serves".[14] Barclay Smith is the director of the foundation.[12]
