How Popeyes Chicken Sandwich Crossed the Road: raceAhead
The sandwich became so popular, they ran out of them. Who should get the credit?
Popeyes Chicken brought the curtain down on one of the most extraordinary episodes in fast food marketing this week when they posted a video on Twitter that was one part highlight reel, two parts ‘sorry, not sorry’: “Y’all. We love that you love The Sandwich. Unfortunately, we’re sold out (for now).”
The chicken sandwich debuted on August 12, and within mere moments, was the talk of the social feeds. Lines formed at Popeyes stores around the country. Other fast food brands took to Twitter to trash talk, turning it into the Chicken Wars. Now, it looks like the chicken-crazed throngs ate their way right through the company’s supply chain.
In this recent op-ed piece,
“Almost immediately, digitally connected Black America weighed in on the sandwich’s taste, availability and inevitable decimation of the reigning king of fast food chicken, Chick-fil-A. Largely driven by Black Twitter, pictures, memes and videos flooded social media for hours, causing the sandwich to sell out all over the country and rival Chick-fil-A’s digital team to turn chicken fingers to Twitter fingers. This was to the tune of almost $25 million in free marketing for the new chicken sandwich contender. All without needing the resources of one Black media outlet.”
The free marketing extended to print, television, and radio, by the way. Everyone got in on the action.
While it’s all been a lot of fun, McCaskill says corporations have to be prepared to show their customers the beef. “Is it enough for an organization simply to do no harm, especially if the chicken and bun taste like magic? Do brands owe the consumers who support and champion them some measure of reciprocity?”
He offers a helpful list of questions he believes that black consumers have a right to ask of the companies that surf behind their powerful digital wakes. They speak to corporate authenticity, and are emblematic of the types of questions that the people who lead major brands should increasingly expect to be asked—in public—when they seek to create engagement around their products, particularly from groups who have historically been excluded from their ranks:
1. Does the CEO of this company have any Black executives reporting to him/her?
2. Does this company support Black advocacy groups like NAACP, NUL, BLM?
3. Does the company support political issues that protect the Black community?
4. What percentage of franchise owners are Black?
5. Does the company spend money with Black vendors and entrepreneurs?
6. Does the company hire and promote Black employees in the stores and at the corporate level?
7. Does the company support Black community events, education initiatives and Black-owned platforms with advertising dollars?
I’d like to add some special sauce to question number six.
During the frenzy, someone posted a photo of a black woman in a Popeyes uniform sitting outside her store, slumped over, head in hands, clearly exhausted. That picture did not go viral for a very good reason—Black Twitter wasn’t in the mood to let her become more overwhelmed than she already was.
While there may now be a case study for social ignition around chicken sandwiches, there is no such interest in the needs and well-being of the many people who turn the cranks behind the sizzle, in this case, feeding and cleaning up after mobs they never saw coming.
In jobs with already limited upsides, they just get more work.