The Reason KFC Just Dissed Popeyes

Good old KFC, always lagging behind the other kids. Hard to take them seriously when it took them until May 2020 to launch a serious entry into the ongoing Chicken Sandwich Wars (nobody really counted that weird donut thing, and last year's Cheetos/chicken mashup didn't exactly have customers creating chaos to nab one). Well, once again KFC proves they're determined to stay behind the times, trolling like it's 2019.

Come on, KFC, Twitter wars are so last year! And yet, there they go, tweeting: "When we hear about a certain 'famous' chicken sandwich, we wonder — is it really famous at all?" (Comment thread comeback: "If you've heard about it, must be pretty famous.") So who were they talking about? Well, Popeye's, of course — it seems even the Colonel doesn't regard McDonald's chicken as much of a threat. But why would they be going after Popeyes now, a full year after that famous sandwich had everybody losing their minds? Well, it seems that Popeyes is about to take the next step in their quest for sandwich world domination, and KFC's feathers are decidedly ruffled.

While KFC has a much larger international footprint than does Popeye's, they're currently madder than a wet hen about the fact that Popeye's is planning to bring the yes-it-really-is-famous sandwich across the border into the Great White North (via the Toronto Sun). KFC followed up their tweet with another tweet containing the text of an open letter, the gist of which can be summed up in its title (which they repeated again as a closing sentence): "You can't have a famous chicken sandwich without famous chicken." They then go on to bring up their history (they've been around for 75 years, while Popeyes has yet to turn 50) and their "11 herbs and spices" with which we're all supposedly so familiar. They even sneak in a boast about their global presence with a glib remark about "how just 3 letters came to mean crispy, delicious fried chicken — in every language."

So why all the clucking? Besides the fact that KFC obviously considers Popeyes to be a fox prowling around their henhouse, it seems they may also be hatching something new. The letter ends by saying "Coming Sept. 7." Just what is coming, they don't say, but from the number of replies to their tweet (single digits, to date), it seems like their new marketing campaign may have just laid an egg.