🔒W. Hartford Chick-fil-A owner Jackson eyes growth after eventful first year

Daryl Jackson, owner/operator of the Chick-fil-A restaurant in West Hartford, launched an ambitious growth agenda since opening in Feb. 2017, including offering alternative delivery points at offsite locations that he was advised against his first year — and he's keeping his foot on the gas.

He plans to sell food offsite at Connecticut Children's Medical Center, which saved his daughter's life last year, and create drive-through enhancements in West Hartford to increase volume. He wants to open two more Chick-fil-A restaurants in the Hartford area and add a food truck. He's also grooming employees who could become future franchisees.

Jackson, 44, has to prove himself to corporate before getting more stores.

“Typically, it's in that five-year range before they'll allow you to have another one, but we're going to check all those boxes — that's what we're working towards every day,” he said.

Chick-fil-A checked a huge box for him last year when, a month after opening, his daughter was born by emergency C-section with her umbilical cord knotted, not breathing for 16 minutes. Doctors prepared him and his wife, Gabrelle, for the worst.

“They basically said that my daughter wasn't going to make it through the night, so do I want to come and say my goodbyes,” Jackson remembers of that March 10 walk to see his daughter and the emotions that washed over him.

“After being out for 16 minutes, one, they didn't think she was going to survive; and if she did, they thought she was going to be brain damaged for not breathing for so long,” Jackson said.

Olivia Charlotte Jackson celebrated her first birthday in the restaurant earlier this month, happy, healthy and without injury, having made a miraculous recovery after about three weeks in Connecticut Children's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Chick-fil-A headquarters sent people to the restaurant “so I could stay a hundred percent focused on my family for the entire month,” Jackson said, his voice reflecting his gratitude.

Jackson, a man of faith who praised the incredible work of Connecticut Children's medical staff, including total-body cooling on Olivia to reduce brain metabolism, believes there was divine intervention.

Touched by families he and Gabrelle saw in the NICU, they donated $100,000, matched by the hospital, to start an endowment to help families unable to stay with their baby 24/7, as the Jacksons did, because of jobs, children at home or other circumstances.

“The fund was really our way to say: How do we help these other families who aren't as fortunate as we are to lighten the load when they're already dealing with so much?” said Jackson, appointed to Connecticut Children's foundation board, where he's been impressed by the hospital's work and vision.

Jackson's gift of money and time marries with Chick-fil-A foundation work, including supporting foster parents with fully paid-for homes and expenses to allow them to focus all their attention on raising their foster children. Meeting such families is part of the training for new owners.

“It helps us to better appreciate that this isn't just about the restaurant,” Jackson said.

Demanding, transparent

Jackson is impressed by his new corporate family, introduced to it by a friend and former colleague at Stanley Black & Decker, Todd Langston, whom Jackson called after hearing he'd opened a Chick-fil-A in Wallingford.

“We probably spent two hours on the phone that evening and that's when the bug bit me,” said Jackson, who had spent his career in manufacturing finance, minus a two-year CFO stint at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

The Chick-fil-A ownership benefits Langston shared in that call sold Jackson, who, about two months later, applied for a store in Feb. 2016, and was awarded the West Hartford location that October.

For Jackson, it was an opportunity to return to the Northeast after growing up in Naugatuck, planning to become an electrician. But seeing a friend's sister, who had graduated UConn in accounting, pull up in a new aqua blue Honda Accord one day convinced him to go to college for accounting.

He instead got a finance degree at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) — preferring P&Ls over debits, credits and reconciliations — worked first for United Technologies Corp., then Danaher Corp., then Stanley Black & Decker as director of global manufacturing finance, positions where he grew enormously and made lasting friendships. He then moved to Howard, too political for his tastes, before returning to manufacturing with Cerro Fabricated Products, a Marmon Group/Berkshire Hathaway company in Weyers Cave, Va., followed by promotion to vice president of finance for Cerro Wire in Hartselle, Ala., when Chick-fil-A picked him.

He's a demanding owner/operator, strict on the rules and policies, but also transparent and sharing, hoping to inspire his diverse workers, numbering about 76 full- and part-time, about what they can accomplish.

Brian Couture, assistant kitchen director and CCSU communications major, admires Jackson's passion for the company and his staff, including his transparency regarding business and numbers.

“I love when Daryl shows me all the behind-the-scenes stuff,” said Couture, whom Jackson says has the ability to own his own store.

Couture says Jackson has opened his eyes to considering business as a career, even possible Chick-fil-A ownership.

Couture is among several of his younger leaders to say they're now thinking about business, Jackson said, adding, “I hope that I've had some influence on that.”

“Oh, definitely,” Couture responded.

Jackson said he wants to impact the lives of staff, “and hopefully in a profound way, not just on the surface — and I think we're doing that.”

His daughter profoundly impacted his, calling her his heart.

“And I feel as though I've been let in on a secret and that secret is about how great it is to be a dad, because I didn't know,” Jackson said.

Check out a video clip of Daryl Jackson's interview at hartfordbusiness.com.

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Executive Profile: Daryl Jackson