Chick-fil-A sauce is 35 years old, and what a journey it's had from a store in a mall
to the most beloved sauce at America's most beloved quick-serve chain.
You've probably had it a ton of times and you might even love it, but what don't you
know about it?
Chick-fil-A lets everyone know they invented the chicken sandwich, but they were also pretty
early in the nugget game.
It's almost unthinkable, but the nugget debuted with no dipping sauce accompaniment.
Fortunately, Virginia-based franchisee Hugh Fleming realized there was something major
missing.
So did his customers, and when they started requesting some sauce, Fleming put his sauce-inventing
hat on and went to work.
He didn't exactly reinvent the wheel, at least not at first.
The original sauce was simply a homemade honey mustard dressing, but it was a huge hit.
They first incorporated it into their store in the Spotsylvania Mall, but this was only
"Chick-fil-A sauce" version 1.0.
When an employee on a lunch break accidentally mixed in barbecue sauce with their honey mustard,
they ended up with the delicious winner we know today.
The Chick-fil-A sauce we all know and love is essentially honey mustard and barbecue
sauce.
But what else is in there?
Strangely, Fleming's original recipe called for a bit of the Chick-fil-A coleslaw drippings,
which makes sense.
Look at today's official ingredients, and you'll see it contains most of the ingredients
of their gone-too-soon coleslaw.
But here's the weird thing: Chick-fil-A claimed in a tweet that the "other part" was actually
ranch dressing.
So are they telling the truth and the ingredients have been swapped somewhere along the way?
Or are they trying to derail our efforts to make our own delectable Chick-fil-A sauce?
Few people really know the truth, and they're not sharing.
Everyone knows it as Chick-fil-A sauce, but originally that wasn't what people called
it.
That's because it didn't officially have a name, and anyone wanting more would ask for
"That special sauce" or "Mr. Fleming's sauce".
Fleming himself never got around to coming up with a name, and it's entirely possible
that's because he was too busy making more.
According to Fleming, people would literally leave their food at the table uneaten if he
ran out of the sauce.
At one point, his crew was whipping up 18 gallons a day and they even employed a single
person to simply fill the sauce cups.
Eventually, they placed the sauce in a pump bottle and even sold it by the jar.
If you didn't feel like actually buying the stuff, you could always just empty your soda
cup out, rinse it, and then fill it to the brim.
And yes, people really did that.
Chick-fil-A certainly took notice of all the sauce success and wanted in on the action.
The problem was Mr. Fleming's sauce was just that; it belonged to Mr. Fleming, not Chick-fil-A.
That meant the folks in Atlanta had to come up with their own sauce that would be similar
to the addictive stuff from Virginia.
The sauce they came up with wasn't bad, but it also wasn't a sauce to fill your soda cup
with.
What's a company to do?
Hugh Fleming had been in the Chick-fil-A biz for close to 27 years when, in 2007, he decided
to finally retire.
It was a big deal, and looking back on his life, Fleming realized that if it wasn't for
Chick-fil-A, his life would have turned out much differently.
So, he just went ahead and gave the secret formula to corporate, for free.
Fleming said,
"It was, as far as I was concerned, a shared credit as far as making it successful.
It was my way of paying the company back."
It took about a year for Chick-fil-A to get the sauce mass-produced, and in 2008 it rolled
out nationwide as Chick-fil-A Sauce.
Immediately, it became the number one sauce available at Chick-fil-A. A third of all sauces
given to customers is Chick-fil-A sauce; which is well over 285 million packets annually.
And now, the bad news: it's not exactly good for you.
That little one-ounce packet contains 170 milligrams of sodium, which is roughly the
equivalent of a small piece of bacon.
And the calories!
There are 140 calories in a single packet, and you can look at it this way.
If you use two packs of sauce, you've eaten more calories in sauce than what's in the
nuggets, since one order of nuggets is just 260 calories.
Is it worth it?
"You ready, champ?"
"I've been ready for this my whole life"