Chick-fil-A holds giveaway event ahead of grand opening in Westwood

Kim Cochran arrived with a cow suit, a tent, her two kids and her husband at a Westwood parking lot early Wednesday morning.

The San Fernando Valley resident set up camp a block away from Westwood’s newest addition – Atlanta-based fast-food chain, Chick-fil-A – to participate in the restaurant’s grand-opening festivities.

The restaurant will open its doors Thursday on the corner of Le Conte Avenue and Westwood Boulevard in a building owned by UCLA.

About 160 people gathered at 6 a.m. in the parking lot on Le Conte Avenue for the giveaway event – a raffle that selected 100 people to receive one free Chick-fil-A meal per week for a year.

The 100 participants who won the raffle tickets must stay at the event’s location until the restaurant opens 24 hours after the raffle to claim their year’s worth of free meals, said Cindy Chapman, a Chick-fil-A spokeswoman.

Wednesday’s contest was Cochran’s fourth time competing for free meals at a Chick-fil-A event. But some of her fellow participants had gone to dozens of the events and even traveled across the country following Chick-fil-A openings to different locations multiple times a year.

UCLA students also waited in the crowd with the Chick-fil-A enthusiasts.

Koya Matsuno and Avery Hsiung, both third-year business economics students, won two of the 100 tickets distributed by Chick-fil-A employees.

Hsiung said she showed up to the event because she likes Chick-fil-A’s food and she wanted to win free meals. They didn’t realize that they had to stay for 24 hours and gave up their tickets to some of the alternates standing by.

Among those who stayed was Jared Maas, a UCLA alumnus who entered the contest with multiple friends from his hometown, Thousand Oaks, Calif. He commenced the 24-hour-long duration at the parking lot waiting with friends outside one of the many large tents participants set up.

Mass said Wednesday’s contest is the second Chick-fil-A contest he has attended. He said he liked the events because they allowed participants to connect with new people from different areas of the country.

Chick-fil-A received some backlash from the UCLA community after it signed a lease for the building last year. Plans for the chain’s opening garnered mixed reactions from the UCLA community, after its president said in interviews that he was in support of “traditional families,” which its owners believe is based on a marriage between a man and a woman.