Earning Chick-Fil-A's Highest Membership Rank Costs A Small Fortune

While a lot of the best Chick-fil-A hacks open up delicious twists on their menu items, the one hack that'll get you the most value is also the easiest: Signing up for the Chick-fil-A One tiered membership program. You can get a ton of freebies using points you earn through the program, with higher membership ranks giving you even more rewards. Getting to the highest tier, Signature, is a simple matter of amassing 10,000 points in a single year. If you do the math, however, you'll realize that grinding all those points will set you back nearly $900.

The starting membership tier gives you 10 points on the dollar, while higher tiers give you a little bit more. To move up a tier, you just need to hit a particular point threshold — 1,000 for Silver, 4,000 for Red, and 10,000 for Signature. Based on the point value for each dollar you spend per tier, it costs $100 to move up to Silver and another $273 to hit Red. From there, it costs a whopping $500 to reach the highest tier, making the total cost of a Signature membership $873. It's a big leap from how much you needed to spend to reach Red membership at Chick-fil-A in 2020, back when it was the highest rank at a total buy-in of $417.

To put things in perspective, you'll need to buy around 175 Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwiches (based on the average price of $4.99) in a single year to become a Signature member. It's a steep price and a lot of fast food, which makes the Signature tier more for diehard Chick-fil-A fans than the occasional diner.

If you're a fan of Chick-fil-A, a Signature membership will help you enjoy even more of it. You get 30 percent more points on the dollar than with the lowest membership tier, letting you score rewards like free Waffle Potato Fries much more efficiently. You also unlock the ability to spend those points on gifting your family and friends with freebies, get bonus rewards from your local Chick-fil-A, and get invited to a free tour of Chick-fil-A's home office and testing kitchen. Signature members can also receive Signature Surprises, which are exclusive rewards that vary between locations.

Past Surprises have included swag boxes, a trip to the Chick-fil-A College Football Hall of Fame, invites to events like Father-Daughter Day, and apparel like socks and caps. Some locations also give free food items on top of the ones you can get by spending points, so it can be a pretty good deal.

It seems, however, that getting the most out of a Signature membership depends heavily on whoever's running the branch at your location; some Chick-fil-A owner-operators are more generous with the rewards than others. While some members report never having received any of the Signature Surprises at their locations, others get them as frequently as every other day. There have also been cases where the same location ended up becoming stingier with the rewards after a new owner-operator took over. Because of this, your odds of making your $873 Signature membership worth it increase the more Chick-fil-A branches there are at your location. This theoretically makes Houston a prime spot for Signature members — it's the city with the most Chick-fil-A locations at over 50.