Medina native opens Chick-fil-A near Syracuse with big crowd lined up
Photo courtesy of Andrew Szatkowski: Medina native Jimmer Szatkowski speaks during a grand opening celebration this morning for a new Chick-fil-A in Cicero, near Syracuse. Szatkowski’s brother Andrew of Medina made the trip for the restaurant’s kick off.
The Chick-fil-A opened at 6:30 this morning and there were more than 150 people waiting in line by 6 in the morning, according to a report from the Syracuse Post-Standard.
The new Chick-fil-A is the first in Upstate New York. Jimmer Szatkowski worked 20 years with IBM as a supply chain executive. He decided to make a career change and left Raleigh, NC and returned to upstate to work on opening the Chick-fil-A.
Szatkowski told the Post-Standard he was drawn to Chick-fil-A’s focus on community service. Chick-fil-A has a custom of awarding its first 100 customers a free meal each week for a year.
Of the first 100 this morning, Szatkowski randomly selected some of the customers and they spent the morning helping at the Samaritan Center, Syracuse’s biggest soup kitchen, and the Francis House, a home for people with a terminal illness.
