47% Of People Agree That This Is The Best Fast Food Chicken Sandwich
It's been over a year since Popeyes fired the opening shot in the Great Chicken Sandwich Wars, introducing a sandwich that was nearly identical to the one Chick-fil-A had been dishing up for decades. Not only did the chicken-eating public start losing its mind, but soon every fast food chain that had any chicken items on their menu was marshaling their own sandwich troops to enter the fray: Arby's, Burger King, Church's Chicken, McDonald's, KFC (upping the ante with the addition of donuts), KFC again (this time with no donuts), Wendy's, Whataburger, Zaxby's... From A to Z, they all piled on.
So who won the war? Was there ever a victor declared? Despite the "peace summit" held by Miami-based Pincho (which has their own entry, the El Crispy), there still seems to be little consensus — although, as an upside, when everybody's upping their chicken sandwich game, that's good news for we the eaters. Still, in order to finally get the definitive answer to the question we've all been asking, Mashed conducted a survey of 555 people around the country and asked them which chicken sandwich they preferred. Well, the vox populi has spoken, and the results are incontestable, since the winner had more than twice the number of votes cast for the runner-up. Sorry, Popeyes — Chick-Fil-A still rules the roost.
The top chicken sandwiches, ranked
Chick-fil-A's classic grabbed a whopping 46.67 percent of the votes, while Popeyes came in second with 21.8 percent. KFC trailed behind with just 11.35 percent, while Mickey D's long-awaited sandwich only earned 6.67 percent. Burger King limped in last of all the restaurants we named, with just 4.14 percent of the vote.
9.37 percent of respondents, however, essentially went with "none of the above," casting their vote in a category we called "other." Wendy's picked up 15 write-in votes, while Arby's got four. Bojangles', Shake Shack, Hardee's, and Raising Cane's each received a single vote. We also managed to poll quite a few respondents who either don't eat chicken, don't eat sandwiches, or don't eat fast food at all, except for one who noted that they only consumed fast food "in an emergency situation." (Such as what, a sudden irresistible craving?) We even got one respondent who objected to the question on semantic grounds, suggesting it would be better to phrase the question "what do you think is" the best chicken sandwich. Anyway, results don't lie, so it's time to declare a Chicken Sandwich War ceasefire. Chick-fil-A remains the king of the coop, but there's still plenty of room for all the other cluckers since most of us can always manage to "eat mor chikin."