Chick-fil-A is known in the United States for its chicken sandwiches and has 2,600 locations across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.
Its newest plans? To expand overseas from North America in the next 3 years.
By 2026, the fast-food chain has scheduled two new locations to appear in Asia and Europe with a $1 billion investment, per The Wall Street Journal — with plans to expand to three more international markets by 2030.
“We feel like it’s time to continue to innovate and try and test how we will do in international markets so that we can learn,” Andrew Cathy, Chick-fil-A’s CEO, told the WSJ.
The restaurant — the third-biggest U.S. fast-food chain, after McDonald’s and Starbucks — will tweak its menu to serve area needs as McDonald’s has done, but will still have the heart of the menu with chicken sandwiches, waffle fries and milkshakes, reported the WSJ.
The fast-food franchise did not respond immediately to inquiries from Deseret News.
Today, the United States has the most restaurant locations — spread between 47 states and Washington D.C. — with Canada coming next and most recently, Puerto Rico. It has tried — and failed — with pop-up locations in the United Kingdom, as reported previously by the Deseret News.
Following protests of the company’s conservative political views surrounding the topic of LGBTQ individuals, the last U.K. location closed in early 2020, reported The New York Times. The company has experienced similar protests both in the U.S. in New York City and its first established international location in Toronto — although it remains open in these locations.
A recent focus to increase the company’s international presence is to triple the number of restaurants to 20 in Canada by 2025, per Retail Insider. Ontario and Alberta will be the main focus of the efforts, with the expansion of 10 restaurants every year after 2025.
In Puerto Rico, Chick-fil-A opened its first restaurant in the country in March 2022. Now, the chain has seven open locations, well on its way to the company’s goal of opening 10 to 15 locations in Puerto Rico before 2027.