How Popeyes’ Fried Chicken Sandwich Became The Fast Food Phenomenon of 2019

Maybe you got to try one the first time around. Or, perhaps you caught up to it when it made its comeback.

Perhaps you thought the hoopla was too extra for your taste, and didn’t make an effort.

No matter what, you undoubtedly knew that Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen introduced a fried chicken sandwich in 2019, and that it became a fast food phenomenon.

The sandwich hit the restaurant world like an asteroid, and its impact was almost as strong when it returned to the menu.

The Takeout called it “the biggest food news story of 2019 and maybe our lifetime.”

Every TV network and local station seemed to cover it. The sandwich made The New Yorker. Chefs tried it, and some tried to copy it.

Certainly, FORBES readers gobbled up everything I wrote about the Fried Chicken Sandwich Wars last summer and again in the fall.

(Sorry for the pun.)

The fried chicken sandwich was a marketing bonanza for Popeyes, earning it an estimated $65 million in marketing power.

Traffic at Popeyes restaurants spiked into triple digits, and the sandwich brought the company a different demographic than usually comes to its restaurants.

The fried chicken sandwich certainly changed my perception of Popeyes. As a regular visitor to New Orleans, I’ve eaten Popeyes lots of times, particularly at Mardi Gras parties.

I know people there are proud that the company has Louisiana in its name, even though its owners are now Canadian.

And I’m well aware of the rivalry between Popeyes and the other famous Southern chicken chain, Chick-fil-A, which is considered the fast food sector’s gold standard.

But, before the sandwich, I generally knew Popeyes for chicken on the bone and popcorn chicken.

The sandwich made me consider it as a viable option to the other chicken places that I like, including Raising Cane’s and Zaxby’s.

I’ve been thinking about how this all happened, and I came up with four reasons.

The sandwich wasn’t just a perfect storm. It was a snowstorm, thunderstorm, tsunami and haboob, all combined.

It tasted good. It’s just like Paul Hollywood says on the Great British Bake Off. The bake comes first, and then the decor and flavor innovation.

Popeyes knew the sandwich had to be something consumers want to eat, and spent two years working on it.

It knew it had to be a great item, and that customers had to be willing to wait in line for long minutes or even hours.

My own criteria for judging a dish is always whether I’d want to eat it again.

I was happy to eat the Popeyes sandwich twice. That said, I haven’t had a third one, but I might some day.

It was accessible. It’s hard to become a craze if you can’t find the object of desire.

Luckily, Popeyes has been on an expansion drive. There are about 2,400 in the U.S., which is double where Popeyes was a few years ago.

Of course, Popeyes is dwarfed by Starbucks and McDonald’s, but that number of stores is on a par with Chick-fil-A.

So if you wanted to find the chicken sandwich, you generally could, even if you had to drive miles to find it. I drove 17 miles.

It was affordable. I was pleasantly surprised that Popeyes priced its chicken sandwich at $3.99. I think it could have gotten away with charging more.

The sandwich is quite hefty, with a large slab of fried chicken breast, pickles and a substantial bun. Each time I tried it, I did not eat dinner, I was so full afterwards.

Of course $3.99 would buy you four things on McDonald’s Dollar Menu, and maybe even more food at a Taco Bell.

Conversely, it’s easy to pay $5 and up for complete meals at fast food outlets. I thought McDonald’s might have priced its P.L.T. too high, at $4.90 in U.S. dollars.

At Popeyes, $3.99 was clearly doable.

Timing is crucial. The Popeyes sandwich originally arrived on Aug. 12, in kind of a dead zone for food news.

By then, other restaurants were already planning ahead for fall.

You were starting to hear about the imminent return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks, which showed up in late August.

But in many parts of the country, temperatures were toasty, meaning no one was quite ready yet to think about drinks connected with autumn leaves.

Popeyes’ sandwich landed when people were eager to go eat one. It wasn’t a burden to wait in line for a sandwich in warm weather.

If you didn’t want to eat inside or in your car, you could go have a picnic.

That was less true when it returned in November, but Popeyes still managed to bring the chicken sandwich back before big fall snowstorms and high winds that swept parts of the country.

No doubt the great fried chicken sandwich wars of 2019 will become a business school case, and marketeers across many fields are analyzing it to see whether they can emulate it.

McDonald’s and Taco Bell are already testing new fried chicken items, and you can bet 2020 will see efforts to capture some of the magic that the Popeyes sandwich enjoyed.

But Popeyes set a new standard for everyone who follows.