Advocating for Nutrition Keeps Chick-Fil-A Healthy

Advocating for Nutrition Keeps Chick-Fil-A Healthy

by Charles Molineaux

October 11, 2007

 

"Chick-fil-A did not have a dietician on staff before I came," she remembers. "When I first came on board, it was ‘Well, here's the dietician. We're not quite sure what to do with her.'" Now all that has changed. Tom Childers, director of menu management, says, "She's that advocate for the nutrition side, the good-for-you side. She keeps us on the straight and narrow." It's a task at which Childers gives Worrell and the company credit for some big achievements, such as the rollout and subsequent refinement of a new fruit cup dish, intended to be a more healthful alternative to Chick-fil-A's iconic waffle fries. The fruit, he says, is now selling well. He also points to Worrell's involvement in the transition of the fries themselves to a new frying method using a healthier type of oil.

The two agree Worrell may have headed off an unpleasant situation at the height of the biggie-size controversy that swirled in the wake of the anti–fast food movie "Supersize Me." "We were looking at going to a larger cup," she recalls. "Right now we have a 32-ounce cup for a large cup, and we were thinking of going up on the ounces. I was saying ‘Wait a minute. We definitely don't want to do that.' That was at the time when biggie size was getting bad press, and McDonald's had changed its policy on biggie fries and biggie drinks. I'm glad we decided not to do that."

Today Worrell's role has shifted more into product development working with company food scientists to develop new dishes, a process that can involve picking her battles. If a product is supposed to be healthy, she is more likely to dig in her heels. "If we were doing a salad or a char-grilled sandwich, I would be pretty strict on nutrition. I wouldn't want them to come up with a salad that was really heavy in fat or a char-grilled sandwich that wasn't healthy for you, but something like a dessert, I'm willing to bend a little." Not that it isn't debated, Childers clarifies. "If I provide you a product that has great nutrition but it doesn't taste good, quite frankly you're not going to buy it. How do you provide both? I think what we have done with Jodie's help and leadership is we have ended up with products that do that." She cut her colleagues some slack on the milk shakes but did make sure the shakes are made with low fat ice cream.

"She is listened to," Childers says, which Worrell calls a welcome change from her earlier experiences as a woman in what she describes as "a pretty traditional company." Worrell acknowledges that along the way it's "been a bit of a struggle, especially when I first arrived here, just getting your voice heard. It's been like they'd listen to the men more so than the women, but that's changed a lot over the years." Worrell finds great significance in the fact that the company now provides a day care center on site. "They realize that women are working and that they're important to the organization and they strive to keep us here."

It's an issue that has suddenly expanded in importance for Worrell herself. Her son Jason, now seven months old, is the new focus in her life. "It's great, of course," she says while beaming, "but it's definitely an adjustment. I'm lucky he's a happy-go-lucky baby, so it hasn't been as hard as I thought it would be." Still, the new world of motherhood has brought changes in priority for which she has no apologies. "I don't stay late at work any more. I want to get home and be with him, I have noticed. I don't think that you have to work long hours and sacrifice your family to get ahead. Chick-fil-A wouldn't want you to do that. It's not that type of company."

Looking ahead, Worrell suspects she has her work cut out for her. She's busy assembling a nutritional education and outreach campaign for customers. She's also constantly updating the Chick-fil-A website, where the nutrition page is one of the most frequently viewed. And then there's the next hot issue of nutritional concern: sodium. "We knew trans fat was coming along and now people are going to start looking at sodium levels," she predicts. "I would think in the next couple of years it will get a lot more press. In today's age, people are a lot quicker to look at something like sodium, whereas trans fats it took a good 10 years before the FDA would recognize it."

Worrell has done an especially good job of maintaining a cool head and keeping the company on an even keel in the face of food fads, says Childers. For her part, Worrell says she just tries to stay ahead of real trends in diet and nutrition. "Coming on, I was fairly young and it was just me finding my own voice and making sure that I make myself heard. Lately it's been a combination of nutrition coming more in the forefront of everyone's mind and me becoming more secure in my own knowledge so that I will speak up. It's part of me just growing within my role here."