Welcome to the Fast-Food Industry's Crispy Chicken Summer

[Mosby]

A deep-fried, golden-brown battle is raging across the country this summer, with your choice of sauces.

Chicken—battered, breaded and served as a sandwich, tender or nugget—has become the fast-food industry’s weapon of choice, with industry heavyweights lining up against fast-growing upstarts and billions of dollars in sales on the line.

Taco Bell is developing a whole menu of crispy chicken tacos, burritos and nuggets, and Wendy’s WEN 0.19%increase; green up pointing triangle is launching new tenders later this year. McDonald’s MCD -0.01%decrease; red down pointing triangle rolled out its own chicken tenders in May, and after the Golden Arches added chicken Snack Wraps back to its menu in July, the hype left some locations short of ingredients.

Chicken-centric chains are plotting to capture more sales, too. Raising Cane’s, with its chicken fingers-centric menu, aims to add 100 locations this year. Wingstop WING 3.55%increase; green up pointing triangle in February launched crispy tenders that Chief Executive Michael Skipworth sees opening a new front for the brand.

“There’s 1.6 billion chicken tenders served annually and we are a long way from winning our fair share,” Skipworth said on a recent investor call.

https://www.wsj.com/business/hospitality/chicken-fast-food-menus-4a192f12?st=SnwrSR&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Yay for smaller portions under the batter. Beware acrylamide overcoat. /nt

[BoRaGard]

2. Pick-a-chick, inc (r)

[haele]

3. They're capitalizing on a fatty crunch. Chicken has little taste, itself.

Notice they're not doing it with US farmed fish (catfish or tilapia), they're using US farmed chicken.
Of course, it only takes 6-8 weeks to get chicken to the size it can go to market, with intensive feeding, so the ability to get a lot of meat to consumers in a hurry doesn't hurt.
But from the portions I've seen, "the summer of Crispy Chicken" seems to be more about the "Crisp" than the chicken itself. Some places, the amount of crisp coat is almost the same amount as the chicken.
Wonder if it's a mouth feel sort of marketing.

[The Madcap]

4. Partly because beef is too expensive to get large sales

Chicken is cheaper, and they can jack up their prices and still sell it.