CHEW was founded in 1995. It was born of a
need to have an easier set way to meet other Christian guys for lunch. The
principals involved were Todd Smith, Greg West, Dan Spencer, Randy Windsor, Gene
Cobb and Stan Powell. Several of us would call each other when we had an
opportunity to see if the others could meet for lunch that day. This process
became cumbersome and time-consuming. Todd shared the
CHEW Vision with Dan( his hope a Christian group could be started that would eventually expand to take up a whole meeting room.). Dan shared this thought with a couple of other guys (Randy Windsor, Stan Powell, Gene Cobb). The next week CHEW met officially for the first time. However, it wasn't CHEW. to this point. A few weeks later, the name was born when Randy got a voice mail number to let everyone know the location of CHEW. The closest number he could get to something to do with eating was 719-CHEW. Then Dan came up with the definition for our acronym. Since then Christians have been
Happily Eating Wherever for years now. Dan's original suggestion (Christians Harrasing Every Waitress) met with a degree of rejection, no matter how well the name seems to fit.(An original quotation and explanation from Dan Spencer, himself, is listed immediately below)
Someone said that CHEW should be an acronym for something -- my initial offering was "Christians Harassing Every Waitress". That made some people "uncomfortable" (i.e., worried their wives would find out), so I had to come up with "Christians Happily Eating
Wherever".