Chick-fil-A Made $23.9 Billion While Closed Every Sunday

Chick-fil-A posted $23.9 billion in U.S. systemwide sales in 2025 while keeping every one of its roughly 2,900 restaurants dark on Sundays — and CEO Andrew Cathy says he has never even calculated what a seventh day would add.

"I never have," Cathy told NBC's Today co-anchor Craig Melvin in an Oct. 14 interview for the network's "Business in America" series. "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."

Cathy, grandson of founder S. Truett Cathy, has led the privately held company since 2021, succeeding his father, Dan Cathy. He framed the closed-Sunday policy as a luxury of family ownership. "We're not trying to scrape out every penny that we possibly can," he said. Being "a private business and a family business," he added, means "we can make those types of investments because we know it means so much to our team members."

Where did the Sunday closure come from?

The policy dates to the chain's founding. Truett Cathy decided to close on Sundays in 1946, when he opened his first restaurant in Hapeville, Ga., according to Chick-fil-A. He had worked seven days a week in restaurants that never closed and wanted himself and his employees to have one day to rest, spend time with family, or worship if they chose.

"It was very common back in the 1940s that a lot of places were closed on Sunday," Andrew Cathy said. "They wanted to have a chance to take a break—go to church, and for others just to take some rest."

The company has made rare exceptions. In 2017, Chick-fil-A opened on a Sunday to feed travelers stranded at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport during a power outage, Fortune reported. It has also faced outside pressure: a 2023 New York bill aimed to require restaurants at state highway rest stops to stay open seven days a week.

How big is the chain without Sundays?

Chick-fil-A doesn't need the seventh day to grow. U.S. systemwide sales rose about 5% to $23.9 billion in 2025 from $22.7 billion in 2024, according to its franchise disclosure document, as reported by QSR Magazine. Only three U.S. restaurant brands top $20 billion in sales — Chick-fil-A, McDonald's and Starbucks — and the other two run far more locations and stay open daily.

The company added a net 179 franchised and company-operated restaurants last year, ending 2025 with 2,863. That count excludes more than 400 licensed locations on college campuses, in hospitals and elsewhere. Chick-fil-A permanently closed 18 restaurants, most of them freestanding stores. Consolidated revenue topped $10.3 billion.

Per-store sales lead the industry, though they've cooled from pandemic-era peaks. The roughly 2,300 freestanding and drive-thru-only restaurants open all year posted median sales of about $9.1 million in 2025 — down from $9.2 million in 2024 and $9.3 million in 2023. The single highest-grossing restaurant brought in $20 million, up from $19.3 million the year before.

What would a seventh day actually be worth?

Cathy hasn't done the math, but analysts have. Analysts cited by Entrepreneur estimated in 2019 that the Sunday closure cost the chain at least $1.2 billion a year in sales — when total sales were roughly half today's level. A back-of-the-envelope calculation on 2025 figures, adding a seventh day at the same daily pace, puts the theoretical ceiling near $4 billion.

In practice, the bump wouldn't be clean. Some Sunday demand already shifts to Saturday and Monday. Industry observers have long argued the closure works as a counterintuitive sales booster, because the scarcity is part of the brand and drives traffic on the other six days.

What about the workers?

Cathy also pointed to the people running the restaurants. Employees value a guaranteed day off, he said, because it means "at least one day on the weekend I'm not going to have to go to work, which is great."

Fast-food schedules usually stretch across all seven days, so that promise sets the chain apart. It's part of why owning a Chick-fil-A is so sought after: the company receives about 150,000 franchise applications a year and opens roughly 150 restaurants annually. Opening Sundays would mean asking operators and crews to give up the one day the company has guaranteed for eight decades — and Cathy made clear he isn't willing to ask.