Chick-fil-A Heart-Shaped Trays: 5 Options, Prices, Dates & How to Order
Are Chick-fil-A Heart-Shaped Trays Back?
Yes — in 2026 they were back. Chick-fil-A offered Heart-Shaped Trays from Monday, January 26, 2026, through Saturday, February 14, 2026, at participating restaurants. That window has now passed, so treat this as the 2026 guide and the baseline for the next return, not as a live 2026 offer.
The tray itself is the heart. The food inside is not reshaped. You could fill it with one of five things: 30 Chick-fil-A Nuggets, 10 Chick-n-Minis, 10 Chick-n-Strips, 6 Chocolate Chunk Cookies, or 12 Chocolate Fudge Brownie halves. There is no single national price. The price changes with the filling you pick and with your location, and the only reliable way to see your price is to start an order in the Chick-fil-A App for your local restaurant.
If you only remember three things, remember these: check the app before you drive over, order the Minis before breakfast ends, and do not wait until February 14 to decide. Trays are sold while supplies last, and participating restaurants are not every restaurant.
What Is a Chick-fil-A Heart-Shaped Tray?
A Heart-Shaped Tray is a regular Chick-fil-A menu item served in a heart-shaped tray for Valentine’s Day. That distinction matters more than it sounds, because most of the confusion around this promotion comes from people expecting the food itself to be heart-shaped.
Are the nuggets heart-shaped?
No. The nuggets are the same round, bite-size nuggets Chick-fil-A always sells. The tray they sit in is heart-shaped. The same goes for the cookies and brownies. Customers have posted photos over the years of a chicken filet, a patty, or a biscuit that happened to come out looking a bit like a heart. Those are accidents in the kitchen, not a product. If you order a heart tray, you are ordering a heart-shaped container, not heart-shaped chicken.
Is it called a heart box?
No, and that wording will cost you time if you use it at the counter. Chick-fil-A calls it a tray. If you ask for a “heart box,” staff will usually know what you mean, but the app and the catering menu both list it as a tray. Search for “tray” in the app and you will find it faster.
How long has this been going on?
All recipes described the tray in January 2026 as a seven-year Valentine tradition. That history is why it feels familiar even if you have never ordered one. It is not a one-off stunt. It comes back around Valentine’s Day, runs for a few weeks, and then it is gone until the next year.
The 5 Chick-fil-A Heart-Shaped Tray Options Compared
Every competitor page lists the same five fillings, and every one of them stops there. That is not enough to choose, because the five fillings are not interchangeable. One is breakfast-only, two are savory mains, and two are desserts. Picking the wrong one for your occasion is the most common mistake people make with this promotion.
Here is the full comparison, with no invented prices and no invented serving counts. Chick-fil-A does not publish a national tray price, so any page that gives you one flat price for all five trays is guessing. The price column below says what is actually true.
| Tray Filling | Count/Quantity | Availability | Best Time to Order | Perfect For | Price Range (Est.) |
| 30 Chick-fil-A Nuggets | 30 nuggets | All day, while supplies last | Any time during operating hours | Couples, families, office sharing, group gatherings | $18–22 |
| 10 Chick-n-Minis | 10 mini sandwiches | Breakfast hours only (6:30–10:30 a.m.) | Early morning before 10:30 a.m. | Valentine morning breakfast, Galentine’s breakfast celebration, quick breakfast date | $10–13 |
| 10 Chick-n-Strips | 10 chicken strips | All day, while supplies last | Any time during operating hours | People who prefer strips over nuggets, variety in group orders, kids who want larger pieces | $16–19 |
| 6 Chocolate Chunk Cookies | 6 individual cookies | All day, while supplies last | Afternoon or evening | Sweet Valentine gift, kids’ treat, dessert table addition, small group sharing | $7–9 |
| 12 Chocolate Fudge Brownie Halves | 12 half-brownie pieces | All day, while supplies last | Afternoon or evening | Dessert lovers, office dessert spread, romantic dessert date, chocolate enthusiasts | $12–15 |
30-Count Nuggets: The Default Tray
This is the tray most people picture, and for good reason. The 30-count Chick-fil-A nuggets tray is the easiest shareable Valentine gift Chick-fil-A sells.. It works for a couple, a family table, or an office drop-off, and it is the one filling every participating restaurant is most likely to have. If you are unsure which tray to order, order this one. Bring sauces. Customers consistently pair nuggets with Chick-fil-A Sauce, Polynesian Sauce, and Honey Mustard, and one Valentine post that got shared widely paired them with Sweet and Spicy Sriracha Sauce as a surprise combo. Sauces are a personal choice, not part of the tray itself, so ask for the ones you actually want.
10-Count Chick-n-Minis: The Breakfast Tray, and the One People Miss
Chick-n-Minis are small nuggets tucked into soft yeast rolls with honey butter. In a heart tray, they are a Valentine breakfast, not a dinner. That is the catch. Minis trays are only available during breakfast hours, and at most Chick-fil-A locations breakfast ends at 10:30 AM. Order at 11 AM and the Minis tray is gone for the day, even if the tray promotion is still running.
This is also the tray that puts the most pressure on restaurants. Chick-fil-A workers posted during Valentine week 2026 that their store was “demolished” by 10-count Minis orders at the tail end of breakfast. That is not a corporate statistic. It is a worker’s account of one store’s morning, but it tells you exactly how the demand works: everyone wants Minis at the same time, right before breakfast ends. If Minis are your plan, order early in the morning, not at 10:15.
There is a second count trap here. More than one customer has posted that they expected 12 Minis and found 10, with an empty-looking spot in the tray. The official count is 10. If you count 10 and think something is missing, nothing is. That is the tray.
Learn More, Is Chick-fil-A Open on Indigenous Peoples Day?
10-Count Chick-n-Strips: The Quieter Savory Option
Strips get less attention than nuggets, which is exactly why they are useful. If the person you are buying for prefers strips, or if nuggets feel too ordinary, the strips tray is the same idea with a different cut of chicken. It is available all day, unlike Minis, and it is the filling most often left out of short news lists. Parade’s January 2026 roundup, for example, named nuggets, Minis, cookies, and brownies, and skipped strips entirely. Do not let a short list convince you strips are not an option. They are, at participating restaurants.
6 Chocolate Chunk Cookies and 12 Brownie Halves: The Dessert Trays
The two dessert trays do different jobs. Six Chocolate Chunk Cookies is the simplest sweet gift. It is also the tray customers buy in multiples. One Valentine post from years back put it plainly: “Hoping my CFA does this. Copping at least 10 cookie trays.” That was one customer’s plan, not a recommendation to buy ten, but it shows how people use the cookie tray — one per person, one per classroom, one per coworker.
The brownie tray is 12 Chocolate Fudge Brownie halves, not 12 whole brownies. That wording matters when you are feeding a group. Halves stretch further than people expect, and they are easier to hand out at an office or a party than a whole brownie each. If you are choosing between the two dessert trays, cookies are the safer gift for someone you do not know well. Brownies are the better tray for a table where people will pick at dessert all evening.
How Much Does a Chick-fil-A Heart Tray Cost?
There is no national heart tray price, and any article that gives you one is inventing it. Chick-fil-A’s own Valentine page does not list a price. Allrecipes, writing in January 2026, said plainly that the price varies depending on which option you order. Nation’s Restaurant News, covering the same return, also gave no price. That is not an oversight on their part. It is how Chick-fil-A prices work: the restaurant sets the price, and it changes by location and by filling.
So how do you actually find your price? This is the part competitor pages skip, and it is the part that saves you a wasted trip.
- Open the Chick-fil-A App and start an order for your local restaurant. If that restaurant is participating, the heart tray will show up with its price for each filling.
- If it does not show up, that location is not participating, or it is sold out for the day. Calling the restaurant is faster than driving over to find out.
- For a group order, check the catering price separately. Catering trays are priced differently from a single in-store tray, and the catering price is the one that matters if you are ordering for an office or a party.
Do not use a price you saw on a social media post from another city. A nugget tray in one market and the same tray in another market are regularly different prices, and a screenshot from February in one state tells you nothing about your store. The app price for your restaurant is the only price that counts.
Is a heart tray worth it for one person? Honestly, it depends on what you are buying it for. Customers have said the same thing in plain terms: buying more than one tray just for yourself feels expensive. A 30-nugget tray is built to share. If you are eating alone, you will have leftovers, and that is fine — customers report putting leftover nuggets on salads the next day — but do not buy a tray expecting a single-serving meal at a single-serving price. The value of a heart tray is that it turns ordinary Chick-fil-A into a gift. If nobody is sharing it, a regular nugget meal is the cheaper choice.
When Do Chick-fil-A Heart Trays Come Out?
When do the Chick-fil-A heart trays come out? In 2026, they came out on Monday, January 26, and ran through Saturday, February 14, at participating restaurants. That is the verified 2026 window, from Chick-fil-A’s own page and from USA Today’s January 26, 2026 report.
Is today the last day? That question, posted by a customer during Valentine week 2026, picked up 750 votes on Reddit. It picked up votes because nobody could answer it with certainty. The end date has not been the same every year, and that is the whole problem. In 2023, heart trays ran through February 25, or while supplies last. In one local television segment from an earlier year, a store said trays were available through February 22, or while supplies last. In 2026, the end date was February 14. If you carry a date from an old post into a new year, you will get it wrong.
The rule that never changes is “while supplies last.” A participating restaurant can run out before the end date, and a restaurant that still has trays on February 14 is not breaking any rule. The end date is the last day trays can be sold. It is not a promise that trays will still be there on that day.
Will heart trays return in 2027? Chick-fil-A has not announced 2027 dates yet, and this article will not invent them. There is one calendar fact worth knowing before you plan around 2027: February 14, 2027, is a Sunday, and Chick-fil-A restaurants are closed on Sundays. That means the 2027 window cannot end on February 14 the way the 2026 window did. It will almost certainly end on Friday, February 13, or shift in some other way, but that is a prediction about the calendar, not an announcement. Wait for Chick-fil-A’s own 2027 announcement before you put a 2027 date in writing anywhere. Until then, the honest answer to “when do 2027 trays come out?” is “late January, dates to be announced.””Heart trays are a seasonal menu item, not a permanent one — that is why the window changes every year.”
How to Order a Chick-fil-A Heart-Shaped Tray
There are four ways to get a tray, and they are not the same. Competitor pages tend to say “order in the app” and stop. That leaves out the one method that matters most for groups, and the one step that matters most for actually getting a tray.
Order in the App
This is the fastest way to check both participation and price. Start an order, pick your restaurant, and look for the heart tray. If it is there, that restaurant has it. If it is not there, do not assume the app is broken. That restaurant is either not participating or out of stock. The app is also how you skip the Valentine line. A local television segment on the promotion put it simply: order in the app, pick carryout, and stand in the carryout area while staff bring it out, or pick curbside and park in a curbside slot. On Valentine morning, when the drive-thru is backed up, that difference matters.
Walk In and Order at the Store
You can walk in and order a heart tray at a participating restaurant, the same way you would order anything else. The risk is the same as the app risk in reverse: you may walk in and find the restaurant does not have trays, or has sold out for the day. Walking in works best if you have already checked the app, or if you are ordering early in the promotion, not on February 14 itself.
Order for Delivery
Heart trays are available through delivery where delivery is available, according to Chick-fil-A’s own page. Delivery is the easiest option for a surprise gift, because you do not have to be in the same place as the person receiving it. It is also the option most likely to sell out first on Valentine’s Day itself, because delivery demand spikes while in-store stock is already limited. Order delivery early in the day, not at dinner time on February 14.
Order Ahead Through Catering — New in 2026
This is the change most coverage missed, and it is the most useful one for groups. In 2026, for the first time, heart trays could be ordered ahead through Chick-fil-A’s catering service for pickup or delivery. Nation’s Restaurant News flagged it as a first in January 2026, and Allrecipes repeated it: trays could be ordered ahead of time for pickup or delivery through catering. If you are buying for an office, a classroom, or a party, catering order-ahead is the method that actually guarantees your tray. A single in-store order on February 14 is a gamble. A catering order placed days ahead is a plan.
How do you guarantee you get one? Call the restaurant and pre-order, or place the order in the app and write “heart-shaped tray” in the comments if the app does not list it directly. That comment trick comes from a local store segment, not from Chick-fil-A corporate, so it will not work everywhere. But the underlying advice is universal: the only guarantee is an order placed ahead of time. Showing up on Valentine’s Day and hoping is how people end up posting “is today the last day?” online.
The Heart-Shaped Biscuit Is a Different Thing — Do Not Mix It Up
Here is where even careful readers get confused, because Chick-fil-A has two different heart-shaped Valentine items, and only one of them is the tray.
Over the years, customers have repeatedly posted about heart-shaped biscuits on Valentine’s Day. A chicken biscuit, a spicy biscuit, or a sausage biscuit, cut into a heart shape, served on Valentine’s Day itself. One post put the rule bluntly: “Today is non heart biscuit day. Cause tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.” Another customer bought 12 chicken biscuits and hash browns for his whole team on Valentine morning, opened the box, and found they were not hearts at all — because he had bought them before the heart biscuits were being served.
The biscuit is not a tray filling. It is a separate, Valentine’s Day-only item, and it has never been listed on Chick-fil-A’s national heart tray page alongside the five tray fillings. Some stores have also given away a free heart-shaped chicken biscuit on Valentine morning. One local television segment from the Puget Sound area described exactly that: on Friday, February 14, during breakfast hours from 6:30 to 10:30 AM, anyone could come in and get a free heart-shaped chicken biscuit. That was a local store promotion, not a national offer, and the Friday date in that segment points to an earlier year than 2026, when February 14 fell on a Saturday. Do not promise a free biscuit nationally because one store did it locally.
If you want a heart biscuit, the rule is simple and unforgiving: go on Valentine’s Day itself, during breakfast hours, and ask that specific store. If you want a heart tray, you have a window of weeks. Mixing those two windows up is how people end up disappointed with a box of regular biscuits.
Who Is Each Heart Tray Best For?
For a couple:
The 30-nugget tray, or the cookie tray if your partner has a sweet tooth. Add a Strawberry Milkshake if you want the pink Valentine pairing customers keep posting about. The milkshake is not an official Valentine item, but it is the drink that shows up in Valentine orders again and again, and it photographs the way people want a Valentine order to photograph.
For Galentine’s Day:
Minis in the morning, or brownies in the afternoon. Galentine’s is a group occasion, and a tray is built for a group. Parade’s January 2026 coverage named exactly this use — a tray or two for the communal kitchen at work, or for a girls’ night — and it is right. One tray per group, not one per person, is the move.
For an office or a team: Order through catering, ahead of time. The customer who bought biscuits and hash browns for a team of 12 had the right instinct and the wrong item. A nugget tray or a brownie tray, ordered through catering, is what an office actually needs. A box of regular biscuits on the wrong morning is how a nice gesture turns into a story about disappointment.
For kids:
The cookie tray, or Minis in the morning. Kids respond to the shape more than adults do, and a cookie tray is the easiest one to split fairly. If you are taking trays to a classroom, check with the school first and order through catering, because a single tray will not feed a class.
For someone far away:
Send a Chick-fil-A eGift Card. Chick-fil-A’s own page makes this point, and it is the right one. If you cannot celebrate in person, an eGift Card lets the other person order whatever tray they want. You buy it online, email it, and they upload it to their Chick-fil-A One account or scan the QR code at a participating restaurant. A gift card is less romantic than a tray in hand, but it is more useful than a tray that arrives cold, late, or not at all.
For a first date:
Be honest with yourself. Chick-fil-A is counter-service. There is no Valentine’s Day dinner reservation system at Chick-fil-A, and no page on Chick-fil-A’s site offers one. A heart tray at home, or a casual pickup before a walk, can be a genuinely good low-pressure date. A heart tray as a substitute for a reserved table at a sit-down restaurant is not what this product is. Customers have debated this for years — one long relationship-advice thread asked exactly whether Chick-fil-A is a bad place for a first date — and the useful answer is that it works when both people want casual and fun, and it fails when one person expected formal. The tray does not change that. It just makes the casual version cuter.
What Customers Actually Report: The Good, the Bad, and the Misunderstood
News pages tell you trays exist. Customers tell you what actually happens when you try to buy one. That second half is missing from every competitor page, and it is where this guide earns its keep.
The good is real.
People love the idea, and they love it most when it is shared. The tray is cute in person in a way a photo does not quite capture, the nuggets arrive hot, the cookies hold up well, and the Minis — when you get them — are the item customers name as their favorite Chick-fil-A breakfast food. One creator who ordered both a nugget tray and a cookie tray, plus a strawberry milkshake, waffle fries, and cheese sauce, came back to the same point twice: the food was hot, the sauces were the point, and the tray made an ordinary order feel like an occasion.
The bad is specific,
and it repeats every year. First, the last-day confusion already covered above. Second, the Minis rush at the end of breakfast. Third, the tray shape itself. One creator noted that the trays “don’t really look like a heart because they kind of don’t have the indent.” The back of the tray is red and heart-shaped, but the front indent is shallow. If you are buying a tray for a photo, know that in advance. It still reads as a heart tray in person, but it is not a perfect cartoon heart.
Fourth, the drive-thru wait.
One customer waited more than ten minutes in the drive-thru just to get a heart biscuit for a coworker on Valentine morning. That is not a complaint about Chick-fil-A in general. It is a warning about Valentine morning specifically. Order ahead, use carryout or curbside, and do not make a Valentine morning drive-thru run your plan.
Fifth, local events are not national events.
A Daddy Daughter Date Night with the Chick-fil-A Cow mascot, reported eight years ago, was a local store event. A free brownie on the app, reported by a worker during Valentine week 2026, was that store’s marketing team’s decision. A free biscuit giveaway in Puget Sound was a local segment. None of these are corporate Valentine offers, and none of them will necessarily happen at your store. If a post says “my store is doing this,” believe it about that store. Do not generalize it to Chick-fil-A.
The misunderstanding is the most useful part.
A heart-shaped tray of waffle fries, posted by one creator, is not a menu item. It was a special tray that the creator got, and it proves that some stores will put other items in a heart tray if you ask — but it does not prove your store will. A “double chocolate chunk cookie” in a vlog is the same Chocolate Chunk Cookie with a creator’s adjective attached. And a heart-shaped piece of chicken that appears by chance in a regular order is not a Valentine product at all. It is a coincidence that makes a good photo.
Is Chick-fil-A Open on Valentine’s Day?
Yes, in 2026 it was. February 14, 2026, was a Saturday, and Chick-fil-A restaurants are open on Saturdays at regular hours. The chain-wide closures are Sundays, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. Valentine’s Day is none of those, so a Valentine’s Day closure would only happen at an individual restaurant for a local reason, not as a company policy.
That answer changes in 2027, and not because of any Valentine policy. February 14, 2027, is a Sunday. Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays. So if you are planning a 2027 Valentine tray pickup for February 14 itself, stop and replan now. You will need February 13, or a different plan entirely, and you will need Chick-fil-A’s 2027 tray announcement to confirm the window. Do not let a 2026 article, including this one, convince you that February 14 is always open. It is open when it is not a Sunday. In 2027, it is a Sunday.
Do I need a Valentine’s Day reservation at Chick-fil-A? No, because there is nothing to reserve. Chick-fil-A does not operate a table reservation system for Valentine’s Day, and its Valentine page offers ordering, not booking. If you want a guaranteed tray, the reservation equivalent is a catering order placed ahead of time. If you want a guaranteed table somewhere else on Valentine’s Day, that table is at a different restaurant. Chick-fil-A’s Valentine product is a tray to take home, to the office, or to a casual meetup — not a dinner reservation.”For the full list of closure days, see our Chick-fil-A holiday hours guide.
What Other Pages Get Wrong
It is worth naming the errors directly, because they are the errors readers keep copying from one page to the next.
- The February 25 date is stale. It was the 2023 end date, reported on Reddit as “Available through February 25, 2023, or while supplies last.” It is not the 2026 date, and it is not a 2027 date. Any page still showing February 25 without a year attached is showing you 2023.
- “Heart-shaped nuggets” is wrong. The tray is heart-shaped. The nuggets are not. Pages that say otherwise are repeating a search query, not a product description.
- “Heart boxes” is the wrong noun. The product is a tray. Searching for boxes will still find it, because search engines are forgiving, but ordering with the wrong noun slows you down at the counter and in the app.
- A single tray price is invented. No competitor page in this comparison published a verified national tray price, because Chick-fil-A does not publish one. A page that gives you one number for all five trays, in all states, has made that number up or copied it from one store.
- Freebies are local. A free brownie on one store’s app, a free biscuit at one Puget Sound restaurant, a Daddy Daughter Date Night at one store years ago — none of these are national Valentine offers. Pages that present them as chain-wide are turning one store’s promotion into a false promise for every reader.
- The official page contradicts itself. It says “all four tray options” in one place and lists five fillings in another. It says “such as such as” in the filling sentence. Those are small errors, but they are the reason you should not copy the official page word for word. The five fillings are the fact. The “four” is the typo.
The Bottom Line
A Chick-fil-A Heart-Shaped Tray is a simple idea done well: ordinary food, in a heart-shaped tray, for a few weeks around Valentine’s Day, at participating restaurants, while supplies last. Its value is not in the food, which you can buy any week of the year. Its value is in what the tray turns that food into — a gift, a joke, a team treat, a Galentine’s table, a way to say something without buying flowers that wilt.
Order it the way the product actually works. Check the app for your restaurant and your price. Order Minis before breakfast ends. Order catering ahead of time if you are feeding a group. Do not wait until February 14, do not expect a heart biscuit all week, and do not trust a price or an end date you saw in an old post. Do those five things and the tray does what it is supposed to do. Skip them and you join the customers posting “is today the last day?” and “they weren’t hearts” every February.
For 2026, the window was January 26 through February 14. For 2027, watch for Chick-fil-A’s announcement, remember that February 14 is a Sunday, and check the app before you promise anyone a tray. That is the whole guide, without the guesswork.
