Americans have been eating more chicken and less meat in recent years, a trend that the fast-food industry has recently adopted, according to Peter Saleh, managing director and analyst for restaurants and food distribution at the analytics firm BTIG.
“This has been an ongoing battle,” Saleh recently told CNN Business. “The poultry segment is a little more popular today with consumers. Everyone is trying to capitalize on that.”
Saleh explained that the sudden increase in new sandwiches – and their commercialization – is a result of the pandemic, which forced companies to withdraw ads during the spring of 2020, when the virus began to spread in the United States.
“Many of them have this advertising chest that they used in late 2020,” said Saleh. “They will use this in the first half of 2021 for new items, including the chicken sandwiches they plan to launch.”
KFC
Do not exclude the Colonel from the chicken war. The chain, arguably the original fried chicken franchise, has found itself trying to catch up in recent years.
McDonalds
The novelties are the crispy chicken sandwich, covered with pickles and served on a potato roll; the Spicy Chicken Sandwich with hot pepper sauce; and the Deluxe Chicken Sandwich, which comes with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise.
The chain launched a new selection of sandwiches on investor day in November, with Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s in the US, explaining that chicken is a good bet for them.
“Globally, the chicken category is almost double that of beef,” he said at the time. “It is growing faster and represents a significant opportunity,” he said. “Developing an excellent chicken reputation represents one of our greatest 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.
Shake Shack
The new sandwich combines crispy chicken breast with sweet and spicy gochujang icing, toasted sesame seeds and white kimchi cabbage salad for $ 7.19. Chick’n Bites are made with white chicken and served with mayonnaise gochujang sauce, available in six-piece orders for $ 5.19 and 10-piece orders for $ 7.19, respectively.
Sweetgreen
It is not a sandwich and it is not fried … but it is crunchy and involves chicken.
The salad costs about $ 14.
–CNN Business’ Chauncey Alcorn and Danielle Wiener-Bronner contributed to this report.