Chic-fil-A

Chic-fil-A

Also Remembered As: Chik-fil-A

Actually: Chick-fil-A

Chick-fil-A Logos Throughout the Decades
Chick-fil-A Logos Throughout the Decades

Chick-fil-A is a popular American fast food restaurant chain specializing in chicken sandwiches. The “fil-A” portion of the name is a play on the pronunciation of “fillet”. It gained notoriety in the press when it publicly declared it’s stance of opposing same-sex marriage.

The first Chick-fil-A opened in 1967 and the name was registered in 1963. The original and official trademark registration from 1968/9 can be viewed online here. Their name has never changed.

The first time I stumbled across this one was on the Subreddit, posted by The_JollyGreenGiant. The post received many replies and many people agreeing with the memory as suggested or with an alternate of memory of “Chik-fil-A”. As with many of these posts, there is also a few that remember as it actually is as well. Searching online for “chic-fil-a” will produce many examples of other people who have misspelled the company as well.

The post was titled “Chic-Fil-A?”, possibly already triggering the effect or confabulation in the mind of the reader; however, polling a few friends without the offering the spelling resulted in the same Chic-fil-A or Chik-fil-A erroneous spelling in all cases. In one case, I asked for a vocal recitation of how to spell it, the subject spelled out, “chick fil a”; however, after asking them to write it out, produced “chik fil a” instead. This may give us a hint into a possible explanation.

Chick-fil-A
Chick-fil-A, Unaltered Logo

My Experience

As a full disclosure, as of writing this, I seem to remember this always spelled as Chic-Fil-A, or Chic-fil-A. At the time of reading the Subreddit posting, I don’t believe I had seen the logo, but rather heard it said or written in articles. The pronunciation has always been “Chick”, so it is quite odd that the spelling flies in the face of how we all pronounce it.

Possible Explanations

Due to the cursive, playful script presented in the logo it’s possible to lose the “k” or “c” visually on first glance. This mistake could be than carried on in the person’s memory until one day, they see evidence that this is not actually the case. Not all people claim to have seen the logo at all though (including myself and my independent subjects).

“Chic” is another unrelated word. It’s possible that our brains are swapping the word for some reason. It’s unlikely this is happening due to pronunciation as “chic” is pronounced differently than “chick” [chik] and there is no claims that people pronounced it “chic” [sheek] in any instance. Swapping the word for “Chik” seems to make more sense pronunciation wise however, although, at the same time, chik is not a word, making it also an unlikely reason.

“fil-A” might hold the key, the rest of the restaurant’s name which appears to be consistent across all the claims. The full pronunciation key is [chik-fil-ay], which is fairly similar to what some suggest being their memory on how it was spelled, although not entirely perfect with the “ay”. “fil” and “a” are non-words, forced into a hybrid amalgamation with the “chick”; is our brains also trying to apply the same logic and rules on the “chick” as well? “Chick is a word, let’s shorten it, and make it fit the rest, “Chic-fil-A” looks about right!

Some of the packaging throughout the years, including the recent years have included their logo being cropped to produce a “Chic” logo, visually. Currently, this is on their french fry packaging. This visual could be all it takes for some people to get confused on the actual spelling.

Chick-fil-A Packaging
Chick-fil-A Packaging
Chick-fil-a Dwarf House entrance Griffin
Dwarf House in Griffin, Georgia

Additional Links

Additional Sources

94 thoughts on “Chic-fil-A”

  1. IT IS CHIC-FIL-A, I am more certain of that than what I ate for breakfast. I dismissed all other mandela effects as possible mis-hearing/remembering, I rembered berenstein, but figured it could have been berenstain, but this absolutely tripped me out. I remember the first time I went to chic-fil-a (in Oklahoma) I asked my dad why chic was spelled wrong, this memory is absolute, and only this has convinced me there is something to the mandela effect.

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      • Lol debunkingmandelaeffects.com denial is strong with this website creator. It’s a supernatural phenomenon not just “false memory” Deal with it!

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      • I used to work for them in high school and ate it a lot growing up and very vividly remember it without the k too for the exact same reason. Why take it out? I thought they were all hokey too until I got to this one and now I’m finding a ton more like c3p0’s silver leg in star wars was never there for me… and I watched those movies a ton growing up. Not so much in the last decade though. Oscar Mayer? Seriously that’s another childhood memory I know it’s oscar Meyers…

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    • Steins gate awesome but I don’t get why the writer pretends chic chik and chick would be pronounced differently bc they wouldn’t be

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      • I think I have solve the mystery of the misspelled name. The cows have always have horrible grammar and have always spelled chicken “chikin”. This has over the years made many of us including myself to think the correct spelling is chik fil a. That’s the best I can come up with and I’m sticking to this theory.

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  2. I worked for chic-fil-a for almost 2 years. It was never chick-fil-a, also I am good friends with my old gm and 3 employees of Chic-fil-a and I asked them how to spell the restaurants name and they all spelled it C H I C-fil-a. I went back into my old resumes to see if I was mistaken but nope I had it down as Chic-fil-a. Now why would a GM and former employees not know the correct spelling of there place of work? Your debunk is BS.

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    • Just check the company history. They are less likely to have been wrong for decades than the memory of a former GM and a few hourly employees.

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      • actually, it makes way fucking more sense that a bright eyed college grad got paid a lot of money to come up with the “chic”-“chick” play on words for the company title, which would cause people to go “hey, why is chick misspelled? and then they look up and find out what “chic” actually means, and then they get the joke and they smile. and then they remember the name of the restaurant and go back. “chick-fil-a” just doesn’t make sense at all… unless you are delightfully unintelligent. sure chick is spelled right, but then it conveys the idea that you’re eating baby chickens, instead of eating stylishly elegant cutlets of premium chicken breast.

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      • I’m not much of one to buy into the whole Mandela Effect. But, if I was, my response to this would be:

        If there is something wonky in the space-time continuum that’s caused the name of the store to change….then I would expect that change to be reflected in the “company history” as well as on today’s signs.

        For the record, I’m a skeptic and I think that the Mandela Effect explanation is a lot less likely than some of the other ones that would explain the disparity.

        But, in the interest of disclosure, I thought it was spelled “Chic-Fil-A”, too and was a bit surprised to find out it wasn’t. I’ve never been a massive fan of the restaurant but I used to have a friend who owned one and my brother-in-law still owns one today. Given the efforts elsewhere in my life to have correct spelling and grammar, I was a bit surprised to find that I’d been spelling the restaurant name wrong all these years.

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    • Yes. The same here I worked there for 3 years and the old coworkers I still know all agree too… I remember chic very vividly growing up because I always thought it was weird it wasn’t spelt chick… I could get debunking this if it were the other way around but not this one….

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    • amen brother! God bless you for posting this! all these skeptics drive me crazy!!

      Yes the human memory is fallible, but not this human and this memory. Its absolute. Its real. Something IS going on.

      Just BELIEVE! You know that memory is not false, let alone collectively false.

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  3. I noticed the strange change from Chic-fil-A to Chick-fil-A years & years ago.
    I have never been to the restaurant, but when I was at the age 6 to 8, my family got TV in a house we were renting.
    Many times I saw commercials for Chic-Fil-A where the announcer says something like “Why do cows everywhere support Chic-fil-a?”
    And it was basically to distract people from eating beef, like the “Duck Season/Rabbit Season” signs in Looney Tunes.
    Anyway, the logo always came on screen, & I always wondered why they left the K off of “chick”.
    I was a good speller.
    It’s obviously about chicken, the C at the beginning is obviously a chicken, every time I’ve read “chick” pertaining to little chickens, it has a K, so why would you call it “Chic-fil-A”? (I didn’t know what fil-A was about, it just sounded like panache, like “ta-da” or “ooh-la-la”)
    Then way later I was in some big parking lot & one of the places was “Chick-fil-A” & I wondered when they changed it, & what made them change it, when they could have had it like that in the first place.
    The font of the letters does not make it easy to assume there’s no K. The K is very conspicuous.
    Every time I see that logo, it looks wrong because of how much I saw the logo in those commercials.

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  4. Another possible explanation is their old advertising campaign. Ads used to (maybe still do?) feature cows with poorly spelled signs that read “EAT MOR CHIKIN”. This combined with the cursive logo font could cause some mis-remembering…

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  5. Just a few days ago I was flipping out that chic fil a was now chik fil a. Then I thought to myself well im probably just mixed up, after all the word is wrong either way. Well last night I drive past the chicken restaurant called chick fil a. Now that is a double dose of the mandela effect AND a trip to the twilight zone.

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  6. Just a few days ago I was flipping out that chic fil a was now chik fil a. Then I thought to myself well im probably just mixed up, after all the word is wrong either way. Well last night I drive past the chicken restaurant called chick fil a. Now that is a double dose of the mandela effect AND a trip to the twilight zone.

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  7. I remember we used to poke fun at the spelling, calling it “sheek” -fil-a… saying it must be a fancy place! I can still visualize the front of the restaurant that I walked by often while visiting the mall 30+ years ago.

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  8. This did not debunk anything. You simply stated your opinion. The name is different. There are plenty of posts people have gone back and found that they wrote with the name spelled chic. I always wondered why it was spelled that way.

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  9. Hello, Debunker Master. I’ve been doing a lot of research others apparently aren’t. I have found numerous mainstream news articles in which the headline says Chic-Fil-A and the body copy says Chick-Fil-A. But wait, there’s more. Google kept trying to change my search but I prevailed. I ended up on LinkedIn. I found several employee profiles of higher-ups at Chic-Fil-A. And before they change it, check out the company profile:

    https://www.linkedin.com/company/chic-fil-a

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  10. Here’s one guy on LinkedIn. He’s in PR. There are quite a few people. You must admit this is weird:

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-a-williams-b631a8b6

    And what proofreader wouldn’t catch this?

    http://atlantadailyworld.com/2016/06/08/almost-60-already-in-line-at-chic-fil-a-to-win-free-sandwich-for-a-year/

    How about this?

    http://www.campbellsville.edu/asst-manager-part-time-positions-chic-fil-a-campbellsville-ky

    There were several openings on Jobs2Careers.com for Chic-Fil-A, obviously approved by the company. I have a few screenshots but did not copy the exact URL and can’t locate it. I’ll be happy to email you the screebshots though.

    Okay, I’m done. Thanks.

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  11. My POINT is that someone working for a company is not going to misspell their own company’s name. Wouldn’t you think??? And it’s very odd that there are numerous headlines of articles in which it spelled one way and the body copy spelled another. But I’m not going to argue with you because I don’t feed tria and it’s very odd that there are numerous headlines of articles in which it spelled one way and the body copy is spelled another. But I’m not going to argue with you. Draw your own conclusions. Goodbye.

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  12. I was on voice text but you get the point. You don’t need to post this comment. In fact you can take all my comments down.

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  13. Nothing was debunked. It is just another sleeping, mesmerized person that only see’s what is right in front of there face at that time. It is easier to fool someone, than to convince them they have been fooled. Let the sleepers stay snoozing, who really cares.

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  14. I’m an excellent speller and I know it used to be Chik-fil-A. I’ve been thinking for a couple years now when did they change it to Chick-fil-A.

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  15. Yeah I kinda figured it out myself. I’ve always thought that it was CHIC fil a until I saw the post on The Mandela effect Reddit page. It bothered me a while until I googled the logo and saw a picture of the French fry container that they use. If you google it you’ll notice the the K in Chick is cut off on the fry container…I know that I’ve always ordered fries so the fry container would probably be my most dominant memory of the franchise…so I’ve never paid attention to the K. Maybe that’s what happened to y’all?

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  16. It was Chic-fil-A when I first saw their sign in a mall in Colorado in 1995. Had never heard of the restaurant before and this memory is burned into my mind. the first word was spelled wrong and Ive always associated the wrong spelling of Chic with the chain. Never really paid attention to their signs when going there because it was just part of the scene and didn’t notice the spelling change until I started looking into the Mandela effect. I always thought that the cows that misspelled “chikkin” was a joke because Chic was misspelled in their name.

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  17. Debunking of Debunking Mandela Effects

    University of Georgia DID NOT get “Chic-fil-A Scholarship Fund” incorrect.

    http://hempshare.org/images/chic-fil-a.jpg

    Nor did Huffington Post (Owned by TimeWarner) publish a story with the name misspelled.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-janssen/chicfila-ruined-my-relati_b_822921.html

    It is okay to admit the Mandela Effect.

    It just means you are your maker and if your life is all f-d up, then you did that to yourself. No biggie.

    Now you know you can hit the re-set button at any time and add a “K” to your name if you like. Or take one away. Names & Labels are meaningless except to those frozen in time.

    Tomorrow it could be Chik-fil-a.

    What happened is Chic-fil-a spoke out against Same-Sex marriage.

    In the blow-back, the founder who is normally private, stepped up to voice his opinion.

    In an attempt to scrub, or wash this, Cathy opted to be a guinea pig for CERN.

    You are all witness to the “DYNAMIC” re-branding of Chic-fil-a to Chick-fil-a in 2012.

    https://books.google.com/books?id=rFiHCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA17&dq=chic-fil-a+same+sex+marriage&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi8nuHIlNDNAhUs_4MKHQD0CQIQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=chic-fil-a%20same%20sex%20marriage&f=false

    You can see from the Sears image “Chick-fil-a” how the Mandela Residual Effect (MRE) leaves traces.

    Reply
    • Thanks for the collection of people making the same typos. If you search for “chik” you will see a large amount of sources also making that mistake too. That logo that was shown in your main image was created by me, for this website. LOL!

      No, you are correct, it’s definitely CERN. Particle accelerators are notorious for their anti-chicken agenda.

      Reply
  18. It was chic-fil-a . . in the reality I came from . . how fitting that google would have this as the over-riding site on the Chic-fil-a Quantum Effect phenomenon.

    Hey google . . your CERN loving satanism is showing . .

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  19. If it was always Chick then why would we have so much trouble remembering how to spell it? Even people who eat there all of the time. It’s CHICK – the first five letters of CHICKen. It’s what they serve. Nobody would be confused. Except, it wasn’t Chick-Fil-A. For many of us, it was Chic-Fil-A and some it was Chik-Fil-A.

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  20. It was always Chic-fil-a. There were only ever 2 in my area that I knew of. The first, was in the food court at the mall. I read it as “sheek” fil-a. It was one of those things you do not forget. It closed as chic-fil-a. The second was in a strip mall that was actually in front of the main mall. This was years later. It was chick-fil-a. I assumed it was damage control, on a subliminal level, since the owner is a bitch ass homophobe

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  21. I know for a FACT that it was chic-fil-a I remember wondering as a child why it was written like that and being confused about it.

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  22. I remember Chik Fil-A. I remember it clearly. I thought about the fact that it was a “Cutsie” spelling. I am certain. I am without any proof but my testimony. The point of the Mandela Effect is that I am in a different “Reality” than I started in. Here, Spock has a beard … get it?

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  23. It was definitely chic fil a for me. I found out about them through the internet rather than in person, because I liked that theyre a christian company and decided to research about and read about them, and came across the story of how they came out against gays. That brought them up from ‘random company’ to ‘place I want to eat at’/’christian fast food trivia. And that they mispelled chick… that was a bit weird

    if they werent christian and didnt have that memorable story I would not have remembered the name and realized it was different

    (also p.s. the logo confusion doesnt work for me, never looked at the logo, I read the name with normal computer text)

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  24. And when did Kentucky Fried Chicken change their name? It’s always been Chicen. I remember thinking, hey that’s sheek’en. and laughing as a child. I thought they were owned by sheiks or something. My timeline in the uni-galaxy is way cooler than yours by the way.

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  25. I definitely remember Chic-Fil-A because as a kid I always wondered why they spelled it as “sheek.” Years later I ate Chic-Fil-A damn near everyday in college, so I am CERTAIN of this lol!! When I noticed the “K” some time within the past year I was like “when did this happen??” I thought I was crazy….

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  26. People have been mispelling Chick-Fil-A since day 1 and feel dumbfounded after learning of their mistake after so many years. If they’ve heard of the Mandela Effect, they may choose to blame it instead of themselves.

    If you asked someone to spell Kazakhstan, and they wrote “Kazahkstan” – and had done so their whole lives – blaming the Mandela Effect is a cheap way to take the blame off themselves.

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  27. Guys one reason everyone thinks this is weird is because on all the chick-fil-a billboards the spelling is chik because ‘the cows wrote it’ and then thinking its chik when you go to the restaurant because of the billboards you unintentionally pay attention to.

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  28. I worked at chick-fil-a for nearly 9 years. It has ALWAYS been CHICK. Come look at my old pay stubs. Also why would it be spelled chic-fil-a when that would be pronounced as sheek-fil-a. 9 years there taught me people ALREADY can’t pronounce the name. Can’t tell you how many people would eat there a few times a week and STILL called it chick-filluh even though they were always greeted with, “Welcome to Chick-Fil-A!” Why would they add another layer of confusion to the name?

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  29. At least since 1989, it’s been Chick-fil-a. You can check simply by looking up Truett Cathy’s It’s Easier to Succeed Than to Fail book published in 1989. Of course, no one has been able to produce evidence of memorabilia with from the 70s or 80s to prove that it was ever spelled differently.

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  30. Bahahahaha most plebbish site ever you literally debunked nothing period f-Ing normie …. You can’t find past evidence in a alternate reality moron admin

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  31. Proving the company never changed the name to Chick, that it has always been “Chick-fil-a” actually proves the Mandela effect even more. That means that in this realm its always been that way, but for those who remember it Chic are remembering from another timeline or parallel universe. If you said the company used to spell it Chic then that would be a debunk, that they just decided to rebrand.

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  32. It’s almost downright scary how many people insist that their own memories are infallible in the face of contradictions. I guess it’s easier to come up with wild and unfalsifiable claims about alternate universes than admit you might be wrong about something.

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  33. The company secretly changed logos across the board to avoid being derogatory with the term Chic. It began years ago. I once worked for a company going through a logo change. It was a big job. We got all new logo items, company vehicles with decals, etc. We rolled everything out over the course of 48 hours and the old logo was treated like unwanted trash. But I do agree I remember Chic not Chick and the new logo doesn’t look as good on packaging nor does it sound as good 🙂

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  34. It was Chic-Fil-A more than 50 years ago. I don’t remember when it changed, but I remember when I was in high school, they offered the Chic-Fil-A sandwich at an Atlanta restaurant called the Old Hickory House. I remember because I thought it was stupid that it wasn’t “Chick”.The first CFA restaurant I remember was at Greenbriar Mall.

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  35. All of you disagree with the debunk yet half of you are contradicting your credibility on the fucking resteraunt being called chic-fil-a. One of you says it changed some time ago. Another says it’s always been. Then this moron at the top finds it to be more possible that some grad student came up with an idea to name the place something to make us laugh resulting in wanting their food rather than years of HISTORY with the god to the dayum facts that it has always been chick-fil-a. I just wanna hit half of you in the face with a G.E.D… Or is that called something else to?

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  36. I always remembered it as chin fil a and I think it is because of the advertisements with the cows that had bad spelling. That probably caused the misrecollection…

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  37. I remember reading chic-fil-a about a million times in the news when they had some controversy with the gay community or something. I know for a fucking fact this company was chic-fil-a but if you look it up, you will find it has been erased from history, replaced with “Chick-Fil-A”. It even feels wrong to type. I cannot believe people can keep denying this.

    There has even been changes to The Bible, explain how the KJV now has:
    “all that openeth the matrix” – Exo 13:12 Exo 34:19 Num 18:15 Num 3:12 Exo 13:15
    “pisseth against the wall” – 1Sa 25:22 1Sa 25:34 1Ki 14:10 1Ki 21:21 1Ki 16:11
    reality has been defaced isn’t it obvious?

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  38. I am from Philippines and I’m certain it is spelled CHIC-FIL-A, I used to work as a representative for several American Companies, they always include CHIC-FIL-A in spelling, pronunciation assessments and training.

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  39. There are hundreds if not thousands of Mandela effects….
    In this reality if you go back in history everything concurs with the present reality..
    Different timelines
    Cern or dwave computers have something to do with it

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  40. I just went to California for the first time June 2018 and I had heard of Chik-fil-A so often on social media, but had never seen one being that I’m from Canada. My friends and I drove past it and I can REMEMBER 100% thinking: “Why do they spell it like that?” It was Chik-fil-A. I was on a mission to try all the fast foods I couldn’t back home (In-N-Out, Jack in the Box, Sonic, Chik-fil-A) so I was veryyyyy much focused on finding one of those restaurants. It was NOT chick, that’s guaranteed.

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  41. Hello, I’m from Belgium.

    We don’t have Chick-fil-A here but I can assure you even I remember it being written as Chic-fil-A because of the logo game on facebook. Now, I have checked again and it seems to be chick-fil-A on the logo game after all. But why do I also remember it this way? It is not possible for me that “eat mor chikin” is the cause because I, as a Belgian, was not aware of that. It is not possible for me to be mistaken by the packaging of the fries because I have never been inside a chick-fil-A. While I often get it right at other mandela effect stories (e.g. sex and the city, looney tunes) I am in fact on the same page as you guys with this logo. It’s puzzling me.

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