How Chick-fil-A’s New Ventures Team Is Solving Problems in Real Time With Field-Based R&D

Ask John Featherston what Chick-fil-A Inc.’s New Ventures team does, and he’ll give you the briefest possible explanation: “New Ventures is field-based R&D to solve our problems fast.” 

Perhaps his economy of language should come as no surprise: The New Ventures team, under Featherston’s direction, is used to operating at warp speed — bringing Chick-fil-A into its future, one groundbreaking business solution at a time. 

With its market-leading growth, Chick-fil-A, Inc. depends on best-in-class, new technologies in areas as diverse as supply chain distribution, augmented reality, virtual reality, sustainability, energy resilience and packaging. New Ventures is responsible for sourcing, developing and trialing those technologies, then launching them throughout the business.  

“New Ventures is a real hammer and real nail being driven in real time. It's tangible. It’s right now. It’s field oriented,” Featherston says. “The bulk of our time is spent in breakthrough and transformative work.” 

The team works with internal stakeholders to identify high-priority business problems. They leverage relationships in the venture capital, academic and startup worlds to identify technologies that could help, then they work with the companies building those tools to create specific solutions, test them in the field, and iterate as needed. In some cases, they will also offer business feedback, guidance and assistance to these companies in exchange for long term co-development opportunities and alignment of interests under the company’s groundbreaking Value Exchange program. 

It’s a wide array of responsibilities, and Featherston says that it requires a diverse skill set from the department’s staff of internal consultants. Among the most useful attributes: curiosity, a penchant for question-asking, a tolerance for risk, consultative skills, and experience in field project management. 

“In the morning, they might be sitting with a team and working to define their business challenges, then planning a pitch day. In the afternoon, they might visit a site where we're testing a technology to measure KPIs,” Featherston says. 

New Ventures staffers are responsible for sourcing, comparing, vetting and selecting technologies to pilot. When projects are ready to scale, they negotiate legal agreements, handle business negotiations, define business structure and launch them into the growing business, which supports more than 2,700 restaurants in 47 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and Canada. 

The team is constantly breaking new ground, pushing into swiftly developing areas such as autonomous vehicle delivery, augmented reality training and microgrid development. 

“Everything we do in New Ventures is a prototype for a new way to solve problems and do work,” Featherston says. “It's a prototype to deliver accelerated results in the field with real-time R&D.” 

We’re looking for tenacious thinkers with big hearts who bring diverse perspectives and a natural curiosity to their work. Learn more about us at www.chick-fil-a.com/careers/corporate.