Chick&fil&A isn’t launching a streaming service. It’s actually way bigger than that.

Since late last year, rumors have swirled that Chick-fil-A is launching its own streaming platform—scuttlebut that the chicken sandwich chain is eager to dismiss. After getting a first look earlier this month at what the company actually has planned, Fast Company can report what the brand is launching is indeed less than a full streaming platform, but potentially something significantly more. In late August, Deadline reported that Chick-fil-A was “moving aggressively into the entertainment space,” developing a slate of original content for an alleged proprietary streaming platform. “The fast-food firm has been working with a number of major production companies, including some of the studios, to create family-friendly shows,” it reported, citing sources close to the deals. The programming was said to span animated shows, reality shows, and game shows, with budgets running to $400,000 per half-hour episode, and the whole platform set to debut later this year. This had followed a job posting the previous November where Chick-fil-A first revealed its hand. The company sought a producer to help create “original programming intended for Chick-fil-A’s soon-to-be launched PLAY entertainment app,” adding: “Shifts in the advertising industry, in concert with our customers’ trust and affinity for the Chick-fil-A brand, all open up an opportunity for Chick-fil-A to extend our role in customers’ lives.” After Deadline surfaced some actual details, the media pounced. Outlets often responded with a mix of shock and mild condescension: “Um, Chick-fil-A Is Starting a Streaming Service?” asked Vanity Fair, New York went with “Normal Headline: Chick-fil-A to Launch Streaming Service,” while The Nation got theatrical (“Move Over Hollywood, Here Comes Chick-fil-A”), and Eater gave programming suggestions, such as a show called Eat Mor Chikin where the brand’s signature cow characters grow so erratically mischievous that “anti-red meat messaging and guerrilla activism tactics become too didactic for viewers.” So what is Chick-fil-A releasing? The answer is an app, called Chick-fil-A Play, which will come out on November 18. It does indeed offer scripted programming that the brand’s fans won’t find anywhere else, along with family-focused games, activities, and entertainment options that reflect aspects of the brand that Chick-fil-A has been busily, if quietly, working to develop for years. The early look we got made clear that if the Play app realizes its full potential, it could be a pipeline not only for a rich supply of original content (like Netflix and HBO), but also original audio series (like Gimlet Media and Wondery), ebooks (like Amazon Kindle), interactive games (like Nintendo), and cooking videos (like Bon Appétit’s Instagram and all those other viral food Reels). So whatever you decide to call it—when asked, Chick-fil-A told me just to say an app offering “family-friendly games, activities, and entertainment”—the platform is laying the groundwork for a family-focused entertainment empire that could leave existing players like greeting cardmaker-turned-cable TV network Hallmark in the dust, and maybe even compete in scope, if not reach, with bigger players like Apple or Disney. After all, before being recognized this summer with a record 72 Emmy nominations for shows like The Morning Show and Palm Royale, Apple was simply a computer company. [Photo: Chic-fil-A] What’s on Chick-fil-A Play In some exciting news, the cows are definitely back. Daisy, Sarge, and Carrots welcome users, then pop up elsewhere across the Play universe, such as in Go Go Cow—which Dustin Britt, Chick-fil-A’s executive director of brand strategy, entertainment, and media, explained to me is the digital racing game the company released on its website last summer, but now with “some enhancements.” The cows appear in their own original shorts too, the company adds. (It’s a safe guess that they’ll be reprising their roles as anti-beef crusaders trying to sabotage the Circus Burger chain’s expansion plans, a theme Chick-fil-A has been developing in recent shorts.) The app will also feature family trivia and singing games, craft activities, cooking videos called “Recipe Remixes” that jazz up a popular Chick-fil-A menu item, a joke generator that Britt warns is programmed with dad jokes, and a library that will initially carry 20 e-book titles, like Kate Messner’s Over and Under the Snow and Kimberlee Gard’s The Day Punctuation Came to Town, with some interactive elements added in. But the section known as “Watch” is what’s primed to draw the most interest. This is where initial users will find seven original animated shorts, though more are planned. Two involve the cows. The rest are episodes of Chick-fil-A’s Evergreen Hills franchise, which the company has spent the past five years refining, maybe for this exact moment. Loosely, it’s about a girl named Sam who discovers a magic passageway in her family’s