Emily was live at Chick-fil-A on Transit and Losson Road in Depew to tell us all about their beautiful holiday light display. They started it last year and are bringing it back bigger than ever.
There are three times as many lights as last year and Andy Privitera, owner/operator says there are about 15,000 lights for this light display. It started last year because most of the traffic was coming through the drive through because a lot of the dining rooms were closed because of COVID and the community has been good to us and Chick-fil-A in general and we wanted to give back in some way and decided to do a light display. They turned their drive-through into a tunnel of lights and the reaction was simply overwhelming simply just from community love perspective about how much they loved the light display so that was it. Once we got all that love back in return, well we are going to do this every year. He says it was an easy decision to go back and make it bigger and animated this year.
Not every Chick-fil-A does this. Andy says Chick-fil-A wants to be the world’s most caring company and as the owner I have a feeling of personal commitment to fulfill that mission that they have and we do that in many ways, making sure food is fresh and delicious and providing great hospitality and taking care of our team but we give back to the community too and this is just a small to say thank you and we will do a lot of other things for the community as well but this is just a way to show care. He says it is a small token of appreciation and thanks to all the folks that come out and eat with us every day.
Andy grew up here in the south towns and left for the service out of high school. He says I didn’t know it at the time, but I ended up doing it for a career. He loved what he did was very proud to be a soldier. He retired in 2016 and applied for an opportunity to own a Chick-fil-A. He says it was a competitive process and I didn’t think they would select me, but they did, and I started out in Omaha which is where my wife was born and raised but when they said they were building in Buffalo, I asked if I could apply and move out to Buffalo where I am from. He says they and they said yes, and they selected me again and here I am, and I am happy to be back.
