No evidence a new Chick-fil-A policy has sparked boycott calls

Chick-fil-A, a national fried chicken sandwich chain with a devoted fan base, has been the target of boycott calls before.

Recent social media posts are saying the fast food favorite is in the crosshairs again because of a new company policy. But unless people are angry about its peppermint chip milkshake returning or the chain’s expansion to Singapore, we have no idea why.

"Chick fil-A’s new policies have people thinking for boycott," a Dec. 1 Facebook post said in sticker text on a photo of the company’s sign. 

"No way this is happening...I'm thinking of boycott too!! Look what they're doing, check the comment," the post’s caption said. The comments linked to a post on a nondescript, ad-heavy WordPress blog that first posted Nov. 25.

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The website’s name was listed as "TA" and it contained a number of short, grammatically problematic and spelling-challenged posts, many of them duplicates, with no authors’ names. The Chick-fil-A post appeared three times and had an incomplete headline that read, "Chick-fil-A Delivers a Bittersweet."

The Chick-fil-A blog post did not refer to any new policies or boycotts. The two-paragraph post referred to news of the chicken chain’s original 1967 store at Atlanta’s Greenbriar Mall closing down. That happened in May 2023, Chick-fil-A’s website said.

We found the same Chick-fil-A post and headline on similar websites and other social media posts using the same language.

(Screenshot from Facebook)

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Some people have called for boycotts of Chick-fil-A in recent years. The most recent example we found in the Nexis news database occurred in March when the company changed its policy to allow the use of some antibiotics in its chicken, angering some customers who preferred its previous antibiotics-free chicken pledge.

In May 2023, there were calls for boycotts among some conservatives on social media after a false claim circulated that the restaurant chain had "just hired a VP of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion." The person cited had been in that role since 2020. Some conservatives were angry about the company’s DEI initiatives.

Prior to that, Chick-fil-A had come under fire from LGBTQ+ activists because of comments made by its founder and company donations to anti-LGBTQ+ charities.

But we could find no evidence that Chick-fil-A has recently enacted a new policy that has resulted in calls for boycotts, either in news reports or on the company’s press website.

We rate this claim False.