Food Theory: Don't Order These Chicken Sandwiches! (McDonalds, KFC, and …)

Yes, what do you want? Hello, Mr. Chick-fil-A. I just tweeted something on the company account and I think I screwed up. You call me at home on the weekend for a little tweet. How bad could it be? 220 million dollars. Bad, well, I'd like to fire you, but that would count as work and it's Sunday so you're free, yeah, loopholes, hello Internet, welcome to Food Theory, home of the original

chicken

sandwich. Theory friends, have you ever felt like you blinked and suddenly? every fast

food

place has a

chicken

sandwich on the menu, if so, you're not crazy, it's the Chicken Sandwich Wars.

No, it's not actually a term I made up just to have an excuse to put battle armor on chickens, but it's something I would have done since the fall of 2019, the world's largest fast

food

chains have been fighting fiercely to market share even more than usual before 2019, restaurants understood their place in the American chicken sandwich fast food chain Chick-fil-A. -The proclaimed author of the chicken sandwich was King and everyone else was welcome to try it and Duke was a distant second if they wanted, despite being closed on Sundays and only having approximately 2,500 locations. McDonald's, for reference, has about 40,000 little Chicks. -fil-A sold about 45 of all the chicken

sandwiches

in the country until Popeyes dared to challenge the king in August 2019.

Popeyes launched its version of the chicken sandwich to medium levels of fanfare when it came to the ingredients , it's more. which similar to almost any other chicken sandwich you are familiar with fried chicken breast mayonnaise pickles the spicy and non-spicy option to throw a Popeye's chicken sandwich was as good as you would expect the excitement surrounding the arena that was probably on track to disappear in a matter of weeks, as most fast food menu items do, but then Chick-fil-A messed up and they jumped on Twitter. His tweet was a seemingly harmless but slightly passive-aggressive jab at Popeyes that said bun plus.

Chicken Plus pickles equal all the love for the original and that, folks, is when Popeyes delivers what is possibly the biggest setback in fast food Twitter history with exactly two words so Southern, oh so devastating, y'all they're fine, now we Yankees may not fully appreciate what it is. I didn't quite understand it at first, so I asked my wife Stephanie, who was born and raised in the American South, to explain: In short, this is a perfectly low-key Southern response run by a proud Southern company. and the nuance was not lost on Twitter, which became absolutely furious at the insult given to the brand over 20 billion impressions valued at an estimated $220 million.

Popeye's Chicken Sandwich sales skyrocketed, causing them to run out of chicken sandwich supplies in just two weeks, much faster than they anticipated when Popeyes managed to permanently restock their restaurants with chicken

sandwiches

in November, sales They skyrocketed even more and Chick-fil-A suddenly found themselves in a position they had never been in before at number two, now after just a few months, Chick-fil-A regained their market. share and Popeyes settled into a battle for number two against McDonald's, but this wasn't a return to normal friends, meaning the chicken sandwich sphere changed forever. Popeyes had shed blood against the king and all the other fast food chains woke up to the idea that maybe the chicken sandwich market was up for grabs after all and that's why we've been surrounded by new and revamped items. on the chicken sandwich menu for the past year.

Burger King launched the chicken. King Wendy's launched its classic chicken sandwich. McDonald's launched chicken. a full line of crispy chicken sandwiches and that's not the full list, basically everyone jumped on the chicken sandwich bandwagon and the market filled up or I guess I should say cluck land, maybe not anyway if you're feeling like a chicken whose head is cut off. Fear not, food

theory

is here to help you understand it all. The tastiest chicken sandwich is a personal decision that you can only make for yourself. We have taken it upon ourselves to look at things a little more objectively.

We've already found the optimal

order

of fries, we've found the optimal

order

of fountain drinks, and today we're going to break down the numbers to determine which chicken sandwich delivers on its spicy promises and gives you the most bang for your buck for the sake of simplicity. we are going to keep. Today's episode focused on the 10 largest fast food chains in the US with chicken sandwiches on their menus. Our apologies to Hardee's and other smaller chains like Zaxby's and Culver's, unfortunately you guys didn't make the cut this time, so with that being said, let's meet our First we have Chick-fil-A, who loves to remind people that their The original Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich was introduced back in 1964.

I would like to add that it is the first fast food chain to sell chicken. sandwiches is a very different thing from inventing the chicken sandwich, but that's a

theory

for another day. Next up is Popeyes, who of course discontinued everything when they released their classic chicken sandwich at the end of 2019 and if you think there's only one classic chicken sandwich today. competition I have bad news for you Wendy's has a classic chicken sandwich KFC has a classic version of its chicken sandwich Arby's has a classic crispy chicken sandwich just like Sonic Drive-In and almost like to make sure every permutation of those words I used to name these sandwiches McDonald's and Dairy Queen, both have a crispy chicken sandwich.

Fortunately, Jack In The Box and Burger King took exception to the sandwich's boring name. Trend or watch until the end. Matt, stop. You have a problem. It's not funny anymore anyway I was saying before you rudely interrupted me Jack in the Box now has the cluck sandwich and Burger King just launched the chicken chicken sandwich. I don't really like the name, but I enjoy how fun it is to say, so if Food Theory I'm not here to judge these sandwiches by their taste. Why are we going to judge him today? Well, the first thing I want to know is who has given us a lot of chicken and who is skimping on it.

After all, it's a chicken sandwich, not a pickle sandwich, so for our top-notch fried chicken grams per dollar, we're leaving out all the toppings and other nonsense, weighing the chicken breast alone and dividing it by the cost of the sandwich. I also want to know about the breading, there are some really impressive looking chicken breasts in Today's Quiz, but looks can be deceiving, especially if a restaurant double-fries the chicken and covers it with two layers of breading, so our second category will be the percentage of breading, we will strip those breasts, please do not demonetize this YouTube video and determine what percentage of the fried chicken breast is actually chicken, next we have the total calories per dollar because, let's be honest, here No one orders fast food chicken sandwiches because of the health benefits, what we, the consumers, want is to fill our stomachs with plenty of it. of food without having to spend a lot of money, so by taking the number of calories in each sandwich and dividing it by the cost, we will be able to determine which sandwiches give you the most food for your money and the final category today is crunchy texture because , well everyone is throwing out the word crispy, who's telling the truth and the way we're measuring this is through sound, you heard that right, today we're going to listen to our chicken sandwiches, more on that in a couple of minutes, so with that mind I sent the theoretical field.

Investigator Luke went out to buy 30 chicken sandwiches, that is, three from every restaurant in the greater Los Angeles area. Why three? Because we wanted to get a diverse data set, we didn't want everything to be judged just by a sandwich once I was satisfied. His car would smell like fried chicken for the rest of Eternity. We conducted our first fried chicken grams per dollar test by removing the toppings and buns and weighing the chicken breasts only once the average chicken breast weight was determined for each restaurant, we broke it down. that number for the cost of the sandwich, our winner in this category was the classic Popeye's King Killer Chicken Sandwich, with 30.2 grams of fried chicken per dollar.

KFC was next with 27.9. It's worth mentioning that Popeyes and KFC also offered the least expensive sandwiches. listed, the price of only 3.99 9 in our market is not bad at all. Arby's and Dairy Queen, which had the two most expensive sandwiches of the group, were doing their best to come in last place, with Arby's ultimately taking that dishonor with just 14 grams. of fried chicken per dollar, less than half of what you get at Popeyes. It's also worth noting that Jack In The Box's cluck sandwich featured the largest chicken breast of all, averaging 140 grams, but ended up not including grams of fried chicken.

Chicken podium per dollar due to its equally enormous price of 5.99, the next percentage of breading. Honestly, the results for this category really surprised me. I thought 10, maybe 20 percent of the fried chicken was breaded by weight, but it turns out that's a lot. more than that, we took our three fried chicken breasts, removed the breading and reweighed the naked breasts and came up with this in case the Jack-in-the-Box sandwich clucked, there was almost more breading than the real chicken with a breading percentage of 49 On average across the three sandwiches, the Cluck sandwich was the big loser of this round, meaning almost half of the sandwich is just breaded.

The category winner with a breading percentage of 31.5 percent was Chick-fil-A, but again, I'm the only one amazed. By that number, the smallest amount of breading was still basically a third of the weight of the fried chicken breast, man alive, no wonder these things taste so good and are so horribly bad for you, speaking of which our next category It was the total calories per dollar this time. All things considered sandwich buns toppings sauces everything first and second place in this category again went to the least expensive sandwiches on the list Popeyes and KFC respectively and the bad news continued for Arby's whose expensive classic crispy chicken sandwich came in last place once again by the way.

Some health-conscious viewers are curious. Which sandwich on the list had the most calories overall? That would be the king of chickens, with a whopping 800 total calories in a single sandwich, it really is the king of heart attacks, while the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich had the fewest calories on the list with 440. Then it was finally time for the category I had been waiting for to be crispy. Why was I so excited about this when you asked? Because we have to rub the fried chicken with a plastic fork and measure it. With a decibel meter, that's right, we decided that the most objective way to determine crispiness would be to measure the decibels created by rubbing a fork over the chicken, the crispier the chicken, the more decibels should be recorded in the Decibel X app. my phone, more soaked. the chicken the lower the reading, shut up, no your fried chicken crispiness test is ridiculous, now full disclosure, we actually failed this test the first time.

See, field researcher Luke picked up all the sandwiches from all 10 restaurants, which took a couple of hours, and then we tried to measure the degree of crispiness, but at that point all the sandwiches had been sitting for a while and, honestly, a lot of them of them were pretty soggy, so we went back to all 10 restaurants, bought another round of sandwiches from each, and redid the experiments properly. there in the parking lots moments after leaving the drive-thru very quickly, although our failed test wasn't a total loss because it made me realize something interesting about chicken sandwich packaging.

I see a lot of restaurants putting their chicken sandwiches in foil bags a couple of times. He actually wrapped the sandwiches in aluminum foil. Dairy Queen was the only one to wrap their sandwich in paper and Arby's was the only one to serve it in a cardboard car box after the sandwiches were in Luke's car for a couple of hours, the ones that were in aluminum foil They were all still very hot but they were also very soggy because the moisture was trapped inside the airtight packaging. Dairy Queen and Arby's sandwiches, on the other hand, were the exact opposite.

Those sandwiches were cold after a couple of hours but they weren't soggy thanks in large part to the fact that they are more breathable containers, so take note folks, if you need to keep your sandwiches warm for a longer period of time, aluminum containers are the way to go, whileSo much so, if you're doing something like ordering from a meal delivery service and despising humidity at the same time. caring for the environment, hey, maybe choose a place that wraps it in paper, anyway, here are the crispy results. McDonald's had the least crispy chicken of all, at just 48.1 decibels, which is a shame, because crispiness is literally in.

On the other hand, the name of the crispiest and loudest piece of fried chicken was a total surprise to me. Dairy Queen. Now I'm not sure where crunchy ends and rock hardness begins, but let's say Dairy Queen's crispy chicken sandwich is priced at $61.2. the decibels definitely towed the line and for my money I'd rather get a sandwich that falls in the sub 60 decibel range like the second place king chicken or the third place sandwich, both of which definitely earned the right to call them crispy, though ironically. They are basically the only two sandwiches on the list that don't.

By the way, I'm happy to report that the decibel and so, with the four categories measured, we were finally ready to count the results, prepare the podium editors, in third place we have Burger King, the chicken. It's a great beef and sandwich, but BK found a way to keep the price under five dollars by earning solid numbers in the category of fried chicken grams per dollar and total calories per dollar. Those 800 calories won't help anyone's waistline, but they will help. Burger King takes bronze in today's competition; silver goes to KFC's classic chicken sandwich, which performed very well in the cost-related categories thanks to the price of 399; the colonel would be proud or should I say proud as we all know he is watching us.

Right now and in first place, the gold medal goes to Popeyes, sorry Chick-fil-A, but it looks like you picked a fight with the wrong chicken chain. Popeye's Classic Chicken Sandwich is a great amount of food and the price is great, and I know I'm not reviewing the taste today, but I have to add something about the texture. If there had been a softness category in today's experiment, Popeyes would have won that one too. I had actually never had a Popeye's chicken sandwich before I started researching this episode and it was gone. prepared to have my chicken nestled between two brioche, Nubes del Cielo, like that, it's a good very tasty sandwich, friends, and finally Arby's earns the disgrace of last place, it wasn't even close, they are expensive, a small breast sandwich doesn't I couldn't even hang how crispy it was. below average, which begs the question: What about Chick-fil-A, the so-called Chicken Sandwich King?

Well, his chicken sandwich missed the podium by coming in fourth place. Their sandwich was priced pretty well and actually had a deceptive amount of chicken. What really held it back in today's competition was a low calorie count, so overall it wasn't a terrible showing for Chick-fil-A by any means, but it looks like there are a handful of competitors that are ready to change the pecking order, but hey, that's just a theory a theoretical food theory if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out some of our other fast food optimization videos. Our episode on how to get the most soda for your money is on right now, so go ahead and drink that episode if you want.

By the way, you thirst for more fear. Give the subscribe button a kiss while you're at it, unless, of course, you're your chicken.