The Fried Chicken Wars Escalate: Fast-Food Giants Battle for Supremacy in 2025

The fast-food industry's 'Fried Chicken Wars' have reached a boiling point—no marinade needed. Major chains are doubling down on crispy, greasy dominance as consumer appetites (and inflation) soar.

Flame-grilled marketing wars

From limited-time offers to social media smackdowns, brands are deploying guerrilla tactics to win over budget-conscious diners. Meanwhile, franchisees sweat over shrinking margins—because nothing says 'shareholder value' like a $0.99 chicken sandwich loss leader.

The crypto of comfort food

Investors pile into quick-service restaurants as recession-proof assets—until the next health trend tanks the stock. For now, the golden age of fried chicken rages on, one grease-stained napkin at a time.

Key Takeaways

• With same-store sales falling year-over-year at KFC, the fried chicken mainstay asked diners for help staging a comeback in the "fried chicken wars."
• The phrase recalls the spicy exchanges fast-food companies lobbed at one another in 2019, when Popeyes launched a fried chicken sandwich.
• Several quick-service restaurants have since rolled out or refreshed crunchy chicken recipes, intensifying the competition.

Hide your sauces. The next battles in the fried chicken wars may be upon us. 

Sales have stalled at some fried chicken mainstays, including KFC and Popeyes, which nevertheless don't intend to cede ground to brands that only began prioritizing crispy poultry in recent years. Meanwhile, fast-food chains known for their burgers, such as Wendy’s (WEN) and Jack in the Box (JACK), are focusing on fried chicken, in part because of higher prices for beef. And chains that traditionally roasted or stewed poultry, like Taco Bell and El Pollo Loco (LOCO), are now serving it crunchy.

“As fierce competition continues in the fried chicken wars, KFC—with 75 years of fried chicken legacy—is entering its comeback era and making KFC impossible to resist,” the company said in a recent press release announcing a "free bucket" promotion. It did so weeks before its parent company, Yum! Brands (YUM), said domestic same-store sales fell 5% year-over-year in the second quarter.

Popeyes, another brand built around fried chicken, saw same-store sales in the U.S. dip 0.9% year-over-year in its most recent quarter, its parent company, Restaurant Brands International (QSR) said.

Chicken Sales That Were 'Massively' Above Expectations

Chicken-centric restaurants feel “everybody else kind of playing in that space,” Restaurant Brands International Executive Chairman J. Patrick Doyle said last week. “With beef prices up, you've seen a lot of people running chicken promotions,” he said, according to a transcript made available by Alpha Sense. 

KFC’s call to arms comes six years after Popeyes added a fried chicken sandwich to its menu, provoking fast-food brands to taunt one another on social media in what was dubbed the “chicken sandwich wars.” Popeyes' new items often sold out. Several restaurants were inspired to roll out and refresh chicken sandwich recipes. 

Poultry-stuffed buns have been gaining on the beloved burger because the meat costs less and is compatible with a slew of sauces, Bloomberg observed. Quick-service chicken chains outperformed others in the segment last year: Raising Cain’s and Wingstop (WING) ROSE in market research firm Circana's ranking of the country's biggest restaurants.

Taco Bell doubled its chicken sales over the past two years, CEO David Gibbs said on a conference call last week. The Yum! unit hopes to build on these gains by continuing to offer chicken nuggets and the option to add crunchy chicken to tacos and burritos, he said. 

Wendy’s plans to prioritize chicken in the second half of the year. And several others have revived, introduced or announced plans to release chicken tenders and sandwiches, including Jack in the Box, Wingstop and El Pollo Loco, their executives have said recently. McDonald's (MCD) recently relaunched snack wraps, a kind of crispy chicken taco.

Even supermarket suppliers are hungry for a piece of the action. Conagra Brands (CAG) is investing in bringing production in-house for fried chicken used in frozen meals, including Banquet Mega fillets that CEO Sean Connolly last month described as on par with Chick-fil-A's.

“We expected good results,” Connolly said of the relatively new chicken product. “We got results massively beyond our expectations.”