Here's How People Would Steal Chick-Fil-A's Signature Sauce From Restaurants
If there is one thing that all Chick-fil-A fans can attest to, it's the fact that the brand has an incredible collection of sauces to choose from such as the Polynesian sauce, the Honey Mustard sauce, the Zesty Buffalo sauce, and its Barbeque sauce. The original superstar in the line-up is, of course, the Chick-fil-A signature sauce.
What many might not know is the origin story behind this delicious, slightly sweet, slightly sour concoction that has a fan following of its own. According to Chick-fil-A's website, it all began with a group of folks feasting on Chick-fil-A's chicken nuggets. One of the franchise owners in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Hugh Fleming, who started his Chick-fil-A outlet in the early 1980s, found himself in a tough spot when a few customers asked whether they could get a dipping sauce with their nuggets. The only problem? The company didn't have a sauce at the time.
Fleming was clever and decided to serve the nuggets with a honey mustard dressing recipe he was familiar with. "I was just grabbing for an idea," Fleming later said. "Those employees loved it and kept coming back. So we made it for them, and then other customers started asking for it. That was the birth of the Chick-fil-A sauce right there." The Chick-fil-A sauce grew so popular that there are now copycat recipes on the internet for those who want to recreate the condiment at home. Others have gone the more direct route of just stealing it.
The sauce was far too popular
Don't underestimate the popularity of Chick-fil-A's signature sauce. Ever. According to Fleming, the signature sauce gained more popularity than he could have anticipated. "Once it [the sauce] got rolling, if we ran out of it, people would literally leave their food on the counter," Fleming told The Free-Lance Star. "They'd be mad at us like we'd done it on purpose."
Hugh's son, Todd, who owns a Chick-fil-A outlet himself, explained that the sauce was so popular that their team had been preparing 18 gallons of the stuff every single day and at some point, an employee was hired to just fill plastic cups with the sauce that customers asked for. This was later moved to bigger pump bottles so that customers could help themselves to the sauce and the team also started selling the sauce by the jar.
The Chick-fil-A sauce made it hard for some customers to restrain themselves. "People put it on everything," Hugh Fleming explained. "Women, in particular, would empty a drink cup, rinse it out and pump it full of the sauce to take home." You read that correctly. Customers would use empty soda cups to get their sauce fix.