Americans have eaten more chicken and less beef over the past few years, a trend the fast food industry has recently taken on, according to Peter Saleh, managing director and analyst covering the restaurants and food distribution of analytics firm BTIG.
“It was an ongoing battle,” Saleh recently told CNN Business. “The chicken poultry segment is a little bit more popular with consumers these days. Everyone is trying to profit from it.”
Saleh explained that the sudden increase in new sandwiches – and their marketing – is the result of the pandemic, which forced companies to pull ads during the spring of 2020 when the virus began to spread in America.
“A lot of them have this war chest of ads they used at the end of 2020,” Saleh said. “They will use it in the first half of 2021 for the new items, including the chicken sandwiches they plan to launch.”
KFC
Do not count the colonel from the chicken wars. The chain, probably the original fried chicken franchise, has been catching up over the past few years.
McDonald’s
The new offerings are a Crispy Chicken Sandwich, topped with pickles and served on a potato roll; the Spicy Chicken Sandwich with spicy pepper sauce; and the Deluxe Chicken Sandwich, which comes with lettuce, tomatoes and mayo.
The chain teased a new choice of sandwiches on Investor’s Day in November, while Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, explained that chicken is a good choice for them.
“Globally, the chicken category is almost twice as big as beef,” he said at the time. “It’s growing faster and represents an important opportunity,” he said. “Developing a reputation for big chicken is one of our biggest aspirations. We want customers to choose McDonald’s for chicken.”
If you can’t wait, McDonald’s still offers nuggets and two other chicken sandwich options in the meantime.
Shake Shack
The new sandwich combines crispy chicken breast with a spicy-sweet gochujang glaze, roasted sesame seeds and white kimchi coleslaw for $ 7.19. The Chick’n Bites are made with white meat chicken and served with gochujang mayo sauce, available in six pieces for $ 5.19 and 10 pieces for $ 7.19 respectively.
Sweet green
It’s not a sandwich and it’s not fried … but it’s crispy and holds in chicken.
The salad costs about $ 14.
–CNN Business’ Chauncey Alcorn and Danielle Wiener-Bronner contributed to this report.