When: November 9
National Chicken Sandwich Day celebrates America's most contested fast food battlefield — and one of the most genuinely delicious applications of fried chicken. The perfect fried chicken sandwich (crispy, juicy, properly sauced) is as worthy of serious food attention as any restaurant preparation.
The "Chicken Sandwich Wars" of 2019 — sparked by Popeyes launching a new fried chicken sandwich — generated over $65 million in free media coverage and permanently changed the fast food industry's focus on fried chicken.
In August 2019, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen launched a new bone-in fried chicken sandwich. A tweet comparing it favorably to Chick-fil-A's went viral. Within two weeks, Popeyes had sold out of chicken sandwiches at locations across the country. The resulting media coverage was estimated at $65 million in free advertising for Popeyes. The Chicken Sandwich Wars had begun. The fried chicken sandwich's American history predates the wars by decades. The form — fried chicken between bread, dressed with condiments — is as natural a combination as American cooking produces, and Southern cooking had been doing it for generations before it became a fast food category. Chick-fil-A, founded in Atlanta in 1967, standardized the fast food version: fried chicken thigh on a toasted buttered bun with pickles, simple, consistent, and for decades essentially unchallenged as the category standard. The wars changed that. McDonald's launched a new Crispy Chicken Sandwich. Burger King launched the Ch'King....