Most of you probably know of my obsession love for Chickfila from my weekly trips, my 25th birthday party at the restaurant or from my Halloween costume this past year.  It shouldn’t be a surprise that when I found out the new restaurant less than a mile from our house was opening last week, I took the day off of work and planned to partake in their “First 100”.

So what’s the First 100 thing? Well when Chickfila opens a new restaurant, they offer free Chickfila for a year to the first 100 customers. Originally this required camping out (Katie and I showed up too late to one of these in 2009), but now they have different types of First 100 events: Road trips, camp outs and scavenger hunts.  After looking online, I learned that my new restaurant would be doing the First 100 road trip and I should get there no earlier than 5:30 am on Tuesday morning. Sold.

Tuesday morning I woke up earlier than I would like to, threw on some clothes and headed to Chickfila.  A few people were already there and the parking lot was blocked off, but they showed us where to park, I grabbed my purse and stood on the sidewalk until 6am.

At 6am registration officially opened, aka they started counting our group and got us in an official line – I was lucky number 34.  In the line ext to me happened to be 2 coworkers who were also taking the day off for free chicken so I had some buddies! We went inside in order, learned about the rules and signed a contract saying we understood the rules.  Then we were given a pin, bag, t-shirt, and a few other goodies while they finished registering everyone.

Turns out it’s pretty cold at 6am, so I was glad I packed a pullover and went back to my car to change into tennis shoes since I had a feeling they’d be more comfortable than my flip flops.  They gave us chicken biscuits and we played some games (I won 2 of the name that tune songs) before 9am when it was time to load up the buses for the road trip.

Instead of just going around town, our road trip was to a local non-profit, Water Missions, where the 100 of us would be volunteering for the day!  We learned about the global water crisis and even carried buckets of water around the property to feel how hard it would be to do that each day to get your family’s water (granted our buckets weren’t full so we got off lucky).  Then we formed assembly lines and filled hygiene bags for them to give to those in the different countries they help to have basic toiletries and get some dignity back.

We spent about 6 hours at Water Missions and this was my favorite part of the day – being able to give back. I’m so happy that the owner decided to go this route and incorporate community service into our First 100 day.

When we were back at Chickfila they set up an Ice Dream sundae party for us and we had a few more games before the day was over and we were officially the first 100 and earned free Chickfila for a year!

We lined up and walked through the building to cheers & cow bells as we were handed our official cards and got a handshake from the owner, Josh Malone.

After 11.5 hours I left exhausted, but fufilled with a day of community service, a card full of free chicken and some new Chickfila swag.  If you have the chance to do a First 100, I definitely recommend it, but get ready for a full day of Eat Mor Chickin!

PS – You can find out all of their new store openings here.