Chick-fil-A CEO Says He’ll Never Allow Chain to Be Open on Sundays: ‘Not Trying to Scrape Out Every Penny’

It seems Chick-fil-A CEO Andrew Cathy has no intention to give the diners what they’ve been begging for.

“My grandfather, his brother Ben, when they started that little restaurant back in Atlanta, it was very common back in the 1940s that a lot of places were closed on Sunday,” Cathy told Today‘s Craig Melvin in an interview published on October 14. “They wanted to do that. They wanted to have a chance to take a break, go to church, and for others just to take some rest.”

That policy has not changed in the company’s 80-year history, despite continued requests from loyal customers. Chick-fil-A, which has expanded to more than 3,000 locations worldwide, refuses to rethink its policy.

“I never have,” Cathy told Melvin. “And that’s being truthfully honest with you, I never have because it’s never something that we’re entertaining. It’s just too important for us.”

“We’re not trying to scrape out every penny that we possibly can,” he continued, “and that’s one of the things about being a private business and a family business is we can make those types of investments because we know it means so much to our team members.”

He added, “We feel like it’s been an attractive thing for [employees], so they can at least have that one day to go do what they want to do.”

According to Today, Chick-fil-A is the third largest chain in the country, behind only McDonald’s and Starbucks, and brings in nearly $24 billion in sales annually.