Illustration: Rui Pu for Bloomberg Businessweek
Something curious recently happened at my go-to office lunch spot. Dig, the fast-casual restaurant where I buy freshly assembled bowls of greens, roasted broccoli, and crispy tofu—seared salmon if I’m feeling fancy—added an unexpected menu item: a crispy chicken sandwich.
For a chain that offers endless combos of mostly anything as long as it can fit in the confines of a bowl, a bulging fried chicken sandwich smothered in a special sauce was an “interesting direction,” concedes Tracy Kim, Dig’s chief executive officer. It works well for high school kids, she says. More important, the chain, which has nearly three dozen locations in the Northeast, was responding to what customers wanted. “We got a lot of requests, especially through catering, for a handheld offering,” Kim says.
Dig could have spun out any number of holdable foods—a Havarti and roasted turkey on olive ciabatta, an artichoke pesto flatbread or a barbacoa taco with purple slaw—all would have been perfectly on-brand. Instead, it made a hard pivot to a fast-food favorite. Even though Dig’s version is antibiotic-free and baked instead of fried, this seemed to indicate something else was going on. The Fried Chicken Sandwich Wars were back, if they ever ended at all.
You could say Chick-fil-A fired the opening shot in this battle in 2015, when the Atlanta-based chain expanded to New York City, forcing residents of the overwhelmingly Democratic city to choose between their liberal values and a really good fried chicken sandwich. (New Yorkers chose the sandwich.) Four years later Popeyes finally got in the game, with a tweet showcasing its brand-new chicken sandwich, setting off a very public back and forth between the two rivals.
Eventually, every other fast-food chain, it seemed, was in the fray: McDonald’s, KFC, Shake Shack, Wendy’s, Burger King, all duking it out with the kinds of twists and limited-time offers once reserved for burgers. In September 2021, Shake Shack debuted its Korean-style fried chicken sandwich in the US, featuring a spicy and sweet Gochujang glaze and kimchi slaw. Not to be outdone, Popeyes has hit back with Buffalo ranch and blackened chicken versions, and last fall, its spicy Truff chicken sandwich, drenched in a Kim Kardashian-backed high-end brand of spicy mayo. None could outdo Wendy’s loaded nacho chicken sandwich, an equally impressive and upsetting twist on two favorite happy hour indulgences. McDonald’s, in an earnings call in February, said its chicken sandwich is now a worldwide $1 billion brand, then two months later unveiled a Cajun-infused spin on its three-year-old hit, the McCrispy.
But fried chicken sandwiches are no longer just the domain of fast-food giants. They now appear on 47% of restaurant menus, according to industry research and consulting firm Technomic, while burgers are on only 41% and are tracking slightly downward. The big jump in ubiquity happened from late 2020 to late 2021, when the number of chicken sandwiches offered on menus went up almost 10%. People still order burgers twice as often as chicken sandwiches, according to market researcher Circana, but after years of treating chicken as an afterthought, restaurants have finally figured out that a fried chicken sandwich is a draw of its own, bringing in customers who might not want a burger but aren’t looking for a salad either.
“At whatever level of the culinary spectrum, chefs want to illustrate their take,” says Circana’s David Portalatin, a food analyst. “Pretty much anywhere you go, you can find someone’s interesting twist on what is ultimately a fried chicken sandwich.” (At last year’s US Open Tennis Championships, a chef from a Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant served his spin: marinated in citrus and ginger and served with hot sauce mayo.)
To what do we owe chicken’s rise? Usually, this question has two reliable answers: It’s healthier than beef and cheaper. But no one thinks health consciousness is driving a market for deep-fried patties sandwiched between white bread that’s smeared with mayonnaise. And the average difference in menu price in May was a paltry 76¢, according to data from Revenue Management Solutions. While that’s unlikely to sway a consumer, it could be a welcome counterweight for a restaurant owner looking at high beef prices.
RMS’ research points to another reason: Generation Z. They love chicken. They love it in sandwiches, they love it in tacos. Maybe even more, they absolutely love a variety of sauces—so much so that maybe we should really be talking about the Sauce Wars. It makes sense that sauces would play such a pivotal role in the marketing of what, if we’re being honest, is really just battered, bland protein. In fact, the best fast-food purveyors are now hawking their sauces, too. Chick-fil-A bottles and sells its signature dipping sauce in supermarkets across the country, competing on the shelf against Taco Bell’s Chipotle creamy sauce, Arby’s Horsey sauce and Whataburger’s creamy pepper sauce.
To understand just how cutthroat the war has gotten, not even the granddaddy of fried chicken, KFC, has been able to keep up. The chain put out a new chicken sandwich in 2021, but the company underperformed Popeyes “on every metric” in the first quarter of 2024, as Restaurant Business reported in May. David Gibbs, CEO of parent company Yum! Brands, laid some of the blame on the competition. Even the temporary return of its infamous Double Down—where two hefty pieces of fried chicken replace the bread of a bacon, cheese and mayo sandwich—didn’t turn things around for the chain.
KFC isn’t giving up the fight. In late March it announced plans for Saucy Nuggets, which features the best parts of the sandwich: hand-held, fried chicken, pre-smothered in sauce. It may just be a rebranded version of the classic chicken nugget, but as Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike Halen told me, Wendy’s has already copied the move. “That’s the big thing in my world,” he says, “drowning them in a bunch of sauces.” — With Lily Meier, Josh Saul and Daniela Sirtori