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| Wayne Hoover ‘79, Vice-President of Field Operations, Southwest Division, Chick-fil-A® |
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| Wayne and Robin have been married for 23 years and have two children. Wrenn (L) is a sophomore at Georgia State College in Milledgeville, Georgia, and Grant (R) is a high school freshman at North Cobb Christian School in Acworth, Georgia. |
When Truett Cathy opened a little chicken restaurant in Savannah’s Oglethorpe Mall in 1968, his Original Chicken Sandwich was only four years old and his infant company barely one year old. After initial success opening his first store in Atlanta’s Greenbriar Mall, the Savannah store was Chick-fil-A’s second-ever location and franchise operation.
Wayne Hoover ’79 worked in that original restaurant for one year during high school while attending SCPS. Little did he know then that he would eventually play a key senior management role in Chick-fil-A’s continuing success.
Now one of the largest privately-held restaurant chains and the second-largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain in the nation, Chick-fil-A® has more than 1,340 locations in 37 states and in Washington, D.C. The company has experienced 39 straight years of growth, with their 47,000-plus restaurant team members working together to surpass $2.275 billion in chain-wide sales in 2006. The company expanded by 73 new locations in 2006, and grew by a record-breaking 90 locations in 2007.
At the helm of one of the company’s fastest areas of growth in the country, Wayne serves on the senior management team as Vice-President of Field Operations, Southwest Division.
Double-digit inflation and their only year decrease in same-store sales drove Chick-fil-A’s eight-member Executive Committee to form the above Corporate Purpose at a two-day retreat in 1982 in response to Truett Cathy’s oldest son Dan’s questions, “Why are we in business? Why are we here? Why are we alive?” Company employees gave the plaque to Mr. Cathy as a Christmas gift, and he posted it by the front door to remind everyone of their purpose when they came to work each day.
After graduating from high school, Wayne attended the University of Georgia in Athens and earned a degree in Advertising. He worked for an ad agency for two years, and then returned to Chick-fil-A® to review job options. He wound up accepting an offer to manage a Chick-fil-A® franchise in Mississippi. Four years later, he began working as a business consultant – assisting and training Chick-fil-A® operators in certain geographical areas – a position he held for ten years. He has served in his current position for the past nine years.
“My job is fun,” he says. “Chick-fil-A is great place to work.” Located on 75 acres of rolling hills and a lake in southwest Atlanta, the corporate headquarters exude a warm sense of family and unique purpose from the moment you walk past the bronzed Corporate Purpose at the front door until you reach the company lunchroom, where all meals are free for employees and guests. “We don’t have any cash registers in the building,” Wayne explains.
Referencing the plaque by the front door, Wayne states, “This statue reminds us of our vision and serves as a guiding principal in all we do.”
Chick-fil-A’s uniqueness is not limited to the fact that company stores remain closed on Sundays. Their corporate culture is pervasively service-oriented, from top to bottom. “We don’t manage people,” Wayne says. “We influence. We give people a vision and purpose, we provide the tools and resources to help them, and their success is our success.”
Wayne teaches and lives out the SERVE model, outlined in “The Secret!” by authors Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller, Chick-fil-A’s Vice-President of Training and Development. SERVE stands for:
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| Wayne enjoys running in races and marathons. He ran the New York Marathon in 2006, completing the 26.2 mile course in four hours and forty-four minutes. |
See and Shape the Future
Engage and Develop Others
Reinvent Continuously
Value Results and Relationships
Embody the Values
Through a partnership with Winshape International (Truett Cathy’s Foundation) and Global Leadership, Wayne serves with a conglomerate of business executives from around the U.S. who travel to other countries to provide leadership training. Their team recently traveled to Ukraine as an evangelical Christian outreach to train business leaders to think and act with principles of integrity.
In addition to their family’s church involvement at Roswell Street Baptist Church - where Wayne serves as a member of the Board of Trustees, a Deacon, and an 8th Grade Sunday School Teacher - Wayne serves on Kennesaw State University’s EMBARK (Executive MBA Recurring Knowledge) Advisory Board for Coles College of Business.
Wayne is married to the former Robin Michael, who attended SCPS in the 8th grade before moving to Douglasville. “We met then and became reacquainted at UGA,” Wayne recalls. After earning her Education degree from UGA and teaching for three years, Robin worked with Wayne in the restaurant in Mississippi and has worked as a full-time homemaker for the past nineteen years.
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