Free-meal contest draws area hopefuls to Chick-fil-A opening

11/1/2012
BLADE STAFF
  • Chick-Fil-A-line-up

    The Blade/Dave Zapotosky
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    • Scott West of Perrysburg, left, and Jamie Adams of Millbury, right, join others camping outside Wednesday at the Chick-Fil-A restaurant in Perrysburg Township. The restaurant opens Thursday. The first 100 participants who comply with the official rules of a company grand opening promotion receive a grand prize of one Chick-fil-A meal per week for a year.
    Scott West of Perrysburg, left, and Jamie Adams of Millbury, right, join others camping outside Wednesday at the Chick-Fil-A restaurant in Perrysburg Township. The restaurant opens Thursday. The first 100 participants who comply with the official rules of a company grand opening promotion receive a grand prize of one Chick-fil-A meal per week for a year.

    Doz­ens of peo­ple gath­ered at the new Chick-fil-A restau­rant in Per­rys­burg Town­ship yes­ter­day in hopes of win­ning free food for a year.

    The restau­rant, at 10315 Fre­mont Pike, is sched­uled to open to­day at 6:30 a.m.

    Each of the first 100 adults in line will get 52 cer­tif­i­cates for a Chick-fil-A meal.

    At 6 a.m. Wed­nes­day, about 60 peo­ple already were gath­ered out­side the restau­rant. Many brought tents, sleep­ing bags, and other equip­ment to make the wait more com­fort­able.

    Chick-fil-A’s “First 100 Cel­e­bra­tion” has be­come a hall­mark of each grand open­ing since the chain first held the event in Ari­zona in 2003.

    The Per­rys­burg Town­ship store is the first stand-alone Chick-fil-A in the Toledo area. Another is sched­uled to open Nov. 29 at the cor­ner of Tal­madge Rd. and Syl­va­nia Ave. in Toledo. The Chick-fil-A lo­ca­tion in­side the West­field Frank­lin Park mall will re­main open.

    Com­pany of­fi­cials said the two new restau­rants will pro­vide a to­tal of about 200 jobs.

    Chick-fil-A Pres­i­dent Dan Cathy, the son of the com­pany’s founder, sparked con­tro­versy ear­lier this year with com­ments op­pos­ing same-sex mar­riage. Long lines formed out­side Chick-fil-A restau­rants on an “ap­pre­ci­a­tion day” and op­po­nents coun­tered with “kiss-ins” by same-sex cou­ples.