HOW THE CHICKEN SANDWICH CONQUERED AMERICA

The sun is setting on burger dominance.

- ELLEN CUSHING

You would have been forgiven, in 2019, for think-ing that America could not possibly get more fanatical about fried-chicken sandwiches. This was the year Popeyes—a fast-food company previously known for bone-in chicken—lost the bones, added a bun (and some pickles and mayo), and set off a complete frenzy. Within days, Popeyes sold out of the sand-wiches; after the chain rein-troduced them permanently, its sales increased 42 percent compared with the same period of the previous year. Plenty of other restaurants had offered fried-chicken sand-wiches before, but I remember this one like it was the Super Bowl, or a natural disaster: massive, bad for traffic, all anyone seemed to be talking about. That December, The Washington Post declared 2019 the Year of the Chicken Sand-wich, which the paper trans-lated into Latin—anno pulli—presumably so time travelers from the past could understand what was going on here. As a society, we had reached peak fried-chicken sandwich.

LOL. Not even close. If, six years ago, the fried-chicken sandwich was a novelty worth standing in line for, today it is a fact of eating in America. From 2019 to 2024, fried-chicken-sandwich consump-tion increased 19 percent at American restaurants, while burger consumption dropped 3 percent, according to indus-try analysis firm Circana. Over that same period, some 2,800 fast-food and fast-casual spots devoted to chicken cropped up across the country—and about 1,200 burger joints disappeared.

This is a challenge to the hierarchy that has ruled American fast food since it was invented: Burgers were the core product, and when fried chicken was available at all, such as at KFC, it tended to come bone-in, or as nuggets or tenders or “popcorn.” Nick Wiger, who with Mike Mitchell hosts a comedy podcast about fast food called