The Great Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Rush of 2019 Ends Abruptly
The chain says it has sold out of its insanely popular new sandwich after only two weeks.
The Great Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Rush of 2019 has rushed to a premature end. And if you didn’t manage to get your hands on one when the mania was at its peak – perhaps you were waiting for the lines to die down? – well, sorry to say, you missed the delicious-fried-chicken boat. For the time being, anyway.
“Y’all. We love that you love The Sandwich. Unfortunately we’re sold out (for now),” Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen announced on its official Twitter feed along with a video documenting the hype, the long lines and the love wrought by the introduction of its new sandwich.
Given the excitement engendered by the sandwich, which was introduced nationwide on August 12 and projected to be offered through the end of September, it’s small wonder it sold out. Social media went nuts for the sandwich. And the conventional media portrayed it as nothing less than a savior, the salve our country needs for its current troubles.
“The Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Is Here to Save America,” declared a headline in The New Yorker.
“A simple sandwich is never just a simple sandwich,” wrote Devra First in the Boston Globe, noting that “African-American Twitter users” had been instrumental in creating the buzz around the sandwich. “It’s a mirror of culture. This one reflects how ours is shaped and disseminated, and who gets elided in the narrative about taste-making and influence.”
First added: “There are so few communal experiences we have left. We aren’t a religious nation the way we once were. We aren’t all watching ‘Dallas’ together on CBS. But something as prosaic as a chicken sandwich can still bring us together — in our quest for something that satisfies, in our common desires. We are all hungry. We all face a hard road ahead.”
Yeah, that is kind of a lot to load onto something as humble as a chicken sandwich. But if ever a chicken sandwich was worthy of such immoderate praise, the Popeyes chicken sandwich is it.
I managed to get my hands on a couple of sandwiches (one “classic,” one “spicy”) earlier this week, standing in line with a diverse group of people (black, white, young and old) late one evening at a Popeyes on a busy Brooklyn corner.
The classic sandwich was really, really good. The spicy one seriously approached the divine – a perfect intersection of tender and crunchy, salt and heat, with a hint of sweet (the brioche) and a tang of sour (the pickle).
But fear not, all you who missed out. Popeyes said in an announcement that it was “working tirelessly” to get the sandwich back on menus following the “extraordinary demand” that exhausted supplies. The chain encourages those who wish to be among the first to know when the chicken sandwich does return – for good, they say -- to sign up for push notifications.
Love that chicken from Popeyes? Yeah, turns out people really do.
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