A new Chick-fil-A restaurant will begin serving the Mesa community on Thursday, June 27, 2024. Chick-fil-A, Inc. has selected Travis Cranford as the independent franchised local Owner-Operator of Chick-fil-A Alma School & Southern.
Located at 1320 W. Southern Ave., Chick-fil-A Alma School & Southern will be open from 5:45 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Designed for speed and efficiency, this drive-thru-focused location will offer drive-thru and Mobile Thru, a fully dedicated lane in the drive-thru where guests can pick up orders placed ahead of time on the Chick-fil-A App. The restaurant will also offer catering, carry out from a walk-up window and covered outdoor seating for Guests who have placed carry-out orders.
The Alma School & Southern restaurant joins more than 40 other Chick-fil-A restaurants serving the wider Phoenix market.
Chick-fil-A’s franchise model is essential to how the restaurant serves others. Most Chick-fil-A restaurants are owned and operated by a single individual, which means Chick-fil-A’s local Owner-Operators are small business owners, not passive investors, who work in their restaurants side by side with their Team Members each day.
In Mesa, Cranford will be responsible for all day-to-day activities of the business, including employing approximately 80 full- and part-time Team Members, serving Guests, cultivating relationships with local organizations and businesses, and tailoring philanthropic efforts to meet the Mesa community’s needs.
Cranford is a North Carolina native but has lived in the Mesa area for over 10 years. He started his career with Chick-fil-A as a Team Member in high school. After college graduation, he returned to Chick-fil-A to pursue becoming a local Owner-Operator. For the next three years, Cranford served in the Chick-fil-A Leadership Development Program, where he supported West Coast restaurants before being selected as the local Owner-Operator of a Chick-fil-A in South Carolina.
In 2013, Cranford returned to the West as the local Owner-Operator of Chick-fil-A Stapley Drive in Mesa, which he will continue to operate alongside Chick-fil-A Alma School & Southern. Cranford looks forward to opening an additional restaurant in Mesa, continuing to invest in his Team Members and finding the extraordinary in the everyday.
“Growing in my career from a Chick-fil-A Team Member to a local Owner-Operator has allowed me to connect more strongly with my team,” Cranford said in a statement. “Together, we have a shared passion to provide exceptional care to the communities we serve. We feel that we are just doing our jobs, but when I take a step back, I am so proud of how extraordinary our everyday can be. I am so excited to continue investing in my Team Members to give them opportunities in Mesa and beyond.”
The Chick-fil-A business is built to add positive impact beyond profit, including giving back to local communities. Chick-fil-A local Owner-Operators are empowered to support the neighborhoods they serve with a key focus on hunger, education, and specific community needs.
In celebration of the opening, Chick-fil-A, Inc. has donated $25,000 to Feeding America to support local hunger relief efforts of United Food Bank, a Feeding America partner food bank, in honor of the new restaurant.
Cranford’s restaurant is participating in the Chick-fil-A Shared Table program, an initiative that redirects surplus food from the restaurant to local soup kitchens, shelters, food banks and nonprofits in need. To date, more than 25 million meals have been created from Chick-fil-A Shared Table donations from over 2,000 Chick-fil-A restaurants throughout the U.S. and Canada.
In addition, Chick-fil-A Alma School & Southern is recognizing 100 local heroes making an impact in the Mesa area by providing them with free Chick-fil-A entrées for a year.
The original Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich is made with a real, whole, boneless breast of chicken with no added fillers, the breaded chicken is pressure cooked in fully-refined peanut oil. To complement the chicken, fresh produce is delivered to Chick-fil-A restaurants up to six times a week for the best quality and flavor.
Guests of Chick-fil-A Alma School & Southern can place an order for pickup, outdoor dining, drive-thru or Mobile Thru on the Chick-fil-A App or online. When joining the Chick-fil-A One tiered membership program, Chick-fil-A One members receive points on every qualifying purchase which can be used to redeem available rewards.
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