Dozens of people lined up outside Popeye’s in downtown Harrisburg, Pennsylvania an hour before it opened one morning in mid-August, including Dillon Snyder ’20.
Snyder, like the others, was there for a new chicken sandwich, which the fast food fried chicken chain had announced three days earlier via a tweet on Aug. 12. The tweet got over 5,000 retweets and 31,000 likes.
Snyder was able to get a sandwich right before the store sold out. As he was leaving, a man offered him $25 for the sandwich. When Snyder declined, the man negotiated up to $30. Snyder still declined.
“I thought about it, but I thought, if he’s offering me $30, then this sandwich must be good,” Snyder said. “I just wanted to be a part of the culture and what was going on.”
The sandwich comes in both regular and spicy versions, with a piece of crispy, buttermilk fried chicken on a sweet brioche bun and mayo slathered on both sides of the bun. An individual sandwich costs $3.99, and a combo meal with a sandwich, side and drink costs $7.
But is it worth the hype?
Kayla Roberts ’20 thought it was “pretty good” when she ordered it through Uber Eats from the Popeye’s on City Avenue. But Roberts did not find the sandwich to be worth all the long lines.
“I don’t understand the crazy lines of people trying to get it all the time,” Roberts said.
Some of the sandwich’s pop phenomenon seems to stem from a Twitter spat that Popeye’s engaged in with Chick-Fil-A, one of its biggest competitors in the chicken sandwich market, and Wendy’s, another competitor. Much has been said about the sandwich by the Black Twitter community, which helped propel the sandwich to viral stardom as well.
Feng Shen, Ph.D., associate professor of marketing, said Popeye’s used social media effectively to build hype around the sandwich and draw attention to its brand.
“It’s like they’re using a word of mouth communication model in a new way,” Shen said. “The key is to get people’s attention and get them interested.”
By Aug. 27, the company announced the sandwich was completely sold out in stores, but promised it would be back soon.
It took over two months, but on Nov. 3, the sandwich was back to coincide with National Sandwich Day, again to long lines of customers. Nov. 3 was also a Sunday, the day of the week Chick-Fil-A closes. The next day, at a Popeye’s in Oxon Hill, Maryland, a man was stabbed to death after an altercation in a line.
Obeid Shah, assistant manager of the City Avenue Popeye’s, said when the sandwich first launched, the store had roughly 1,800 orders per day just for chicken sandwiches. On many days this past month, the line of cars trying to get into the Popeye’s parking lot has caused traffic on City Avenue.
Since the sandwich came back on Nov. 3, Shah said they “have had between 700 and 900 chicken sandwich orders per day.”
As for Snyder, he said if he knew the sandwich would be coming back months later, he would’ve taken the $30 for it. Still, he thought it was a good sandwich.
“It was worth the wait and the hype,” Snyder said.
