Our new feature about Chick-fil-A explores the Christian principles behind the company. That got us thinking about other popular brands that are Christian-based.
Once upon a time in the United States, marketing Christianity was a good business strategy. Target—yes, that Target—was founded by a Presbyterian Sunday school teacher who purchased the lot from his church, closed the business on Sundays, and refused to place ads in papers that promoted alcohol. Even as late as 2000, Tyson Foods had introduced an in-house chaplaincy program that has since evolved. Originally, employees wondering about the program who asked if they’d receive a Christian message there were answered with: “I’m sure you will.” Now, the effort involves a more diverse-sounding mixture of Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, and Mormon chaplains whose official aim is to “treat all faiths with dignity and respect, while also supporting those who may not have any religious affiliation.”
As Fast Company explores, Chick-fil-A is among a decreasing number of American companies that still pin their growth on their Christian roots. After all, one poorly thought-out action today has the potential to offend half of the consumers, either secular ones, for serving unwanted religion, or Christians, for not being religious enough.
“There are lots of ways to be a Christian business,” the prominent evangelical author Jonathan Merritt tells Fast Company in the new story about Chick-fil-A, “and some are riskier than others.”
Merritt’s point is that the bigger questions go beyond branding. They apply to a company’s actions: What does “being Christian” mean? Do meetings begin with prayer? Does a company embody Jesus’s servant leadership? Or see itself as a culture warrior? Or merely print Bible verses on bags?
The following four Christian-based companies have attempted to walk that high wire in different ways. The one thing they share: full confidence that the faith-based business principles they have embraced are 100% responsible for their success.
The tragedies that have befallen the In-N-Out family dynasty would drive many people to invoke God’s name. This may help explain why Lynsi Snyder, the burger chain’s current president and sole heiress to its fortune, asserted that “God is the glue that holds In-N-Out together” in her new memoir published six weeks ago—the first to be published by a Snyder.
Henry and Esther Snyder opened In-N-Out in 1948 as California’s first drive-through hamburger stand, two years after Truett Cathy started the Atlanta diner that evolved into Chick-fil-A. Henry died at 63 from lung cancer. His son Rich became In-N-Out’s second president, at age 24. In-N-Out quintupled in size under Rich’s tenure. Then, in 1993, Rich was killed in a horrifying jet crash at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport. His brother, Guy, became In-N-Out’s third president, before dying in 1999 from a hydrocodone overdose. Esther, at 79, took over as In-N-Out’s fourth president, but then she died several years later. Guy’s then-28-year-old daughter, Lynsi, took the baton in 2010. She acquired full ownership when she turned 35, by which point she had become America’s youngest female billionaire. She says that Christianity has helped her to “find peace.”
Rich had become born-again in the 1980s, after he fell in with the Jesus Movement at Costa Mesa’s Calvary Chapel, one of the earliest megachurches. He started printing Bible verses on In-N-Out food wrappers around 1987, as a way to put a “little touch of faith on our brand.” It was “kind of tough” to have a burger empire on your shoulders as a 20-something, Rich explained, and this was “my way of thanking God for helping.” His Calvary Chapel pastor argued that since burgers were so popular, this might also prove “a great way to awaken people” to the fact that the Bible “has the answers for today’s problems.”
Today, John 3:16 is affixed to the bottom of soda cups, Proverbs 3:5 to milkshake cups, and Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 9:6 to particular holiday cups. Revelation 3:20 is found on the burger bags, and Nahum 1:7 appears on Double-Double wrappers. When Lynsi became president, she added Proverbs 24:16 to the fry boats, Luke 6:35 to coffee cups, and John 13:34 to the hot chocolate cups.
The Snyders avoid publicity, rarely give interviews, and release little financial information about their privately held company. That’s kept their donations to conservative politicians and political causes out of the limelight, helping In-N-Out to (mostly) escape the boycotts and protests visited upon Chick-fil-A. (In the midterm election year of 2022, In-N-Out’s PAC donated $750,000 to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that works to elect Republicans. Meanwhile, the four top corporate donation recipients were Herschel Walker followed by the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.) Some secular progressives may balk at the Bible verses, but probably not In-N-Out’s reputation for paying a living wage and investing heavily in employee development, enough for some workers to stay for decades.
In-N-Out’s connection to Calvary Chapel provided a front-row seat to two spectacular explosions occurring in America around the same time. As fast-food brands like In-N-Out were angling to become multicity chains, newfound megachurches like Calvary Chapel were busy morphing into global church chains, establishing satellites in new markets where pastors could be recruited as “spiritual franchisees.” Calvary Chapel expanded from one site with 25 attendees to an international association of 1,800 member churches in 60 countries, a dozen radio stations, and 20 Bible college campuses.
And that is where the Snyders’ business and religious philosophies diverge: In-N-Out refuses to adopt the franchise model, remaining intentionally confined to the Southwest, from the Pacific Coast to Dallas. “My heart is totally connected to this company because of my family,” Lynsi has said, “and the fact that they are not here—I have a strong tie to keep this the way they would want it.”
When In-N-Out was getting started, the Snyders befriended another local Christian entrepreneur in the burger biz: Carl Karcher, founder of what became the multibillion-dollar Carl Karcher Enterprises, parent company of Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s. A devout Catholic who had 12 children and attended daily mass, Karcher espoused the same free market principles and believed in the same family-centered Christian work ethic as the Synders, and the Cathys too, at Chick-fil-A.
Karcher praised the Snyders for heeding his business advice to make going high-touch a priority. “They were very particular about their people smiling,” he gushed in Stacy Perman’s bestseller In-N-Out Burger. “They wanted their employees to feel like they were part of the company, like they were owners themselves.”
Where maybe they differed was on core values. Karcher’s was “never give up.” In fact, he shaped CKE to reflect his conservative religious values. Board meetings began with the Prayer of Saint Francis and the Pledge of Allegiance. Later, he would invest $1 million in California’s Prop 6, making him the top financial backer of the controversial 1978 state ballot initiative, opposed by even Ronald Reagan, that would have allowed school boards to fire gay teachers. Carl’s Jr. sandwiches were rechristened “bigot burgers” by gay rights activists.
Karcher paid the Securities and Exchange Commission $664,000 for insider trading at CKE in the 1980s. He was ousted by the board in 1993. Under successor Andy Puzder—another Catholic social conservative, who was briefly tapped as President Trump’s Labor secretary nominee—Carl’s Jr. became known for running racy ads featuring scantily clad models who did things like lick the burgers, and then saying, “Look at sales. And our sales go up.” Karcher was reportedly “heartbroken that a company he founded on Christian principles” had engaged in “such an amoral act.”
The clothes brand that hooked a generation of young shoppers on $5 halter tops and $25 sequin dresses was the brainchild of an evangelical Korean couple, Do Won and Jin Sook Chang, who argued their brand always existed to serve a higher calling. That’s why the Bible’s most famous salvation verse, “John 3:16,” appears at the bottom of Forever 21’s yellow shopping bags. “I hoped others would learn of God’s love,” Do Won once explained to CNN. “So that’s why I put it there.”
The Forever 21 origin story, according to the Changs, is downright Old Testament-esque, with Jin Sook ascending a Los Angeles mountaintop to pray. At the peak, God commanded her to open a store, promising that the reward would be earthly success. Their company made them billionaires and gave them resources to take mission trips to nations that “needed” God, like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. If Forever 21 “hadn’t worked out,” they reportedly told their daughters, they might have become full-time missionaries. One of the daughters, Linda, once told Businessweek that their gigs as high-paid fast fashion executives was actually “part of their missionary vision,” which may be why the Changs reportedly “strongly encouraged” Forever 21 vendors to join them at predawn prayer services. Still, their other daughter, Helen, once clarified: “There is no religious tilt to Forever 21. The faith of the founders is separate to the brand.”
Perhaps that compartmentalization sheds some light on how the brand has managed to get itself entangled in controversy after controversy, from selling items that seem offensive on their face (such as feather headdresses or an “Oriental Girl Necklace“), distributing free Atkins bars with plus-size orders, to buying goods that the U.S. government said were made “under sweatshop-like conditions,” to being sued for copyright infringement by Ariana Grande, Diane Von Fürstenberg, and the software company Adobe.
Each incident caused a bad PR cycle, often with stories that brought up Forever 21’s “shopping-bag evangelism.” Could that tactic annoy customers more than it teaches them about God’s love? Worse, do companies that profess to live by the Bible run higher risks of getting called out for hypocrisy?
Forever 21 went bankrupt in 2019, a result of dying mall traffic plus a bad corporate bet that doubled down on fast fashion. The Changs stepped back from the company—which was acquired by the biggest mall owner in America and two other investors. For now, yellow bags still carry the words “John 3:16.”
Last September, Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard declared that “Earth is our only shareholder” and committed 100% of the outdoor-apparel brand’s future profits to the climate fight. A month later, Hobby Lobby owner David Green appeared on Fox News to announce that, kudos to Earth, but he was also giving away his company, a 969-store art-supply business, and “I chose God.”
Asked if Hobby Lobby—which could break $8 billion in sales this year—will start using customers’ money to fund Christian ministries and causes directly, Green said: “Exactly, that’s the way it’s going to be from now on.” He was unforthcoming about the details, except to say 100% of the voting stock has been moved into a “stewardship” trust.
The business, the world’s largest private arts-and-crafts chain, is still being run by the Greens, a family of Southern Baptists, of which at least six are preachers. As with every other company on this list, the founding family has stated that its business is faith-based. (“Honoring the Lord in all we do,” reads Hobby Lobby’s mission statement, specifically “operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles.”) What makes Hobby Lobby unique is that it goes beyond other brands’ mere shopping-bag or burger-wrapper evangelism. The retailer is still most famous for Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby Stores, a 2013 Supreme Court case that overturned the Obamacare “morning-after pill” mandate in a landmark win for Christian business owners.
The Greens are among America’s largest donors to evangelical causes. (They underwrote the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., at a cost of $500 million.) They also operate Mardell Christian bookstores and run Every Tribe Entertainment, despite having never set foot in a movie theater. But their big Supreme Court victory attracted new enemies. To counter what they argued was a raft of Burwell misinformation, the Greens, already suspicious of mainstream media, created a website called HobbyLobbyCase.com that still hasn’t been taken down a decade later. “People on the Internet seem to have a lot of thoughts and questions about Hobby Lobby,” it reads. “Here are some answers.” (Among them: that the federal government was “violating family business owners’ religious freedoms,” and that Hobby Lobby is not “depriving its women employees of health care.”)
But for Hobby Lobby, the real downside of making more enemies might be new eyeballs on its business model. In 2015, that included the federal government’s, after it accused the company of smuggling 5,500 ancient artifacts from Iraq during Iraq War to put on display at the Museum of the Bible. The items came through dealers in the United Arab Emirates who, the evidenced suggested, acquired them off the black market. U.S. customs agents seized the shipment, and Hobby Lobby was fined $3 million plus ordered to surrender all 5,500 of the items. It was noted that by acting as the go-between, Hobby Lobby was poised to be able to “donate” the artifacts to the museum, then write off their value as a tax deduction.
For more on Chick-fil-A’s Christian mission, and how the company evolving to meet the times, read the full story, “Chick-fil-A nears $19 billion in sales: Inside the evolution of a controversial brand” from the Winter issue of Fast Company.
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