Chicken meets streaming: Chick-fil-A is reportedly eyeing a future in streaming. The American fast food restaurant chain isn’t interested in creating its own series about its business as you might suspect. Rather, the chicken sandwich specialist wants to launch a new streaming platform that could compete with established players like Disney and Netflix.
According to an exclusive report from Deadline, Chick-fil-A is working with multiple production companies on unscripted, family-friendly programming to build out a new streaming service. One project, which already has an order for 10 episodes, is said to be a gameshow from Glassman Media – the company behind NBC’s The Wall.
Budgets for unscripted shows like this are said to be around $400,000 per half-hour, the publication was told. Unsurprisingly, Chick-fil-A kept quiet when pinged for comment.
Deadline has also heard that Chick-fil-A is interested in scripted content and animated projects, and is exploring the possibility of licensing additional content to build out its library. Sources say Brian Gibson, who has worked on The X Factor and Top Gear USA, is in charge of programming and is the one responsible for reaching out to other producers.
Chick-fil-A is not the first to step outside of its comfort zone to test the entertainment waters. Lyft produced an eight-episode trivia game show series that premiered on the company’s YouTube channel. Before that, Airbnb put out a documentary about a 300-member gay men’s chorus.
You may also be surprised that Chick-fil-A has previously produced a series of short, animated films called Stories of Evergreen Hills.
As for why Chick-fil-A wants to get into the entertainment industry, well, there are a couple of leading theories. Chick-fil-A could see the move as an opportunity to gather personalized customer data for an advertising play. Walmart could be working on something similar through its recent acquisition of Vizio, and Disney already has an established foothold with Disney Plus. And who knows, maybe we will even see a fast food / streaming / subscription tie in.
Image credit: Caleb Oquendo, Brad
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