Chicken sandwich chain Chick-fil-A will open its first Queens location at Queens Center mall on Sept. 1 and the first 100 people on line will win a year’s supply of free meals.
The store will open at 9:30 a.m. and as part of the restaurant’s “First 100″ event, 100 adults ages 18 and older will win 52 Chick-fil-A meals. The 100 winners will receive digital offer cards worth a grand total of $37,000 in free food. Only residents of the five boroughs are eligible.
If more than 100 people are on-site when the line officially forms at 5 p.m. on Aug. 31, then all 100 spots will be determined by a drawing held that evening. Those selected will camp out in the parking garage to secure their spot.
Queens resident Paul Daniels is the franchise owner and will look to employ 80 part-time and full-time workers. Employees will be local residents and paid above the $12 minimum wage going into effect in December 2016.
“Queens is a thriving global community, and my goal for this restaurant is to establish a global family,” Daniels said. “I want to make sure that my team members seize the opportunity to learn from one another and embrace the qualities that make each one of us unique. I look forward to creating a fun, rewarding workplace and to seeing what my team members can achieve.”
The chicken served at Chick-fil-A will be whole breast meat without any fillers, hormones or additives and pressure cooked in 100 percent refined peanut oil, which is trans-fat- and cholesterol-free. By the end of 2019, every Chick-fil-A restaurant will serve chicken raised without antibiotics.
Bread will be purchased from Automatic Rolls of New Jersey and Damascus Bakery in Brooklyn.
The chain, which has two other locations in Manhattan, will partner with New York Common Pantry to donate surplus food to hungry families.
In May, Chick-fil-A drew criticism from local Councilman Daniel Dromm, who is openly gay and the leader of the City Council’s LGBT Caucus. He cited the owner’s strong anti-LGBT beliefs as a reason why he hoped Queens Center mall would “reconsider” the company’s lease.
“I am deeply disturbed that Chick-fil-A continues to give 25 percent of their charitable contributions to anti-LGBT organizations … This group imparts a strong anti-LGBT message by forcing their employees and volunteers to adhere to a policy that prohibits same-sex love,” he said in a previous statement.
Mayor de Blasio echoed Dromm’s sentiments. “I’m certainly not going to patronize them and I wouldn’t urge any other New Yorker to patronize them. But they do have a legal right,” he said in May.
The billion-dollar franchise made explosive headlines in July 2012 when its CEO and President Dan T. Cathy expressed homophobic beliefs during an interview with the Biblical Recorder. He changed his tone slightly in a 2014 article with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“I think the time of truths and principles are captured and codified in God’s word and I’m just personally committed to that,” Cathy told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I know others feel very different from that and I respect their opinion and I hope that they would be respectful of mine … I think that’s a political debate that’s going to rage on. And the wiser thing for us to do is to stay focused on customer service.”
Chick-fil-A at Queens Center mall will be open from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
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