Is McDonald's Preparing To Enter The Chicken Sandwich War?

Just as Popeye's prepares to bring back its chicken sandwich, the one that was the viral hit of the fast food world for a brief but shining moment in late summer 2019, there comes an indication that McDonald's is preparing to enter the arena with its own revamped chicken sandwich in January 2020. Evidently McDonald's chicken sales had a bit of a turndown over the summer, according to Business Insider. This would have been right around the time when the chicken sandwich war was in full swing, with Popeyes vs. Chick-fil-A as the main event and Church's and Wendy's providing a little side action.

Shockingly, during this time when really, really good chicken sandwiches were fighting to outdo one another, nobody was really in the mood for another mediocre McChicken. (McDonald's did say they saw a little growth in burger sales at the time, which at least indicates that not everybody was enraptured with the other summer 2019 trend of Impossible foods.) While the chain introduced its new Spicy BBQ Chicken Sandwich in September, this menu item failed to make much of an impression on either Team Chick-fil-A or Team Popeyes. Looks like it was back to the drawing board for the McDonald's research and development team, as struggling franchisees continued to clamor for a better chicken sandwich.

Although the new Mickey D's chickenwich is not yet ready for prime time, the restaurant has already gone live with chicken breakfast offerings such as McChicken McMuffins, Chicken McGriddles, and McChicken Biscuits (via Business Insider). These chicken-before-egg morning meals are currently available at about half of their U.S. locations, and while there isn't a lot known about this upcoming breakfast chicken sandwich, it could be in a similar form as these predecessors. 

While this is seen by some as a direct challenge to Chick-fil-A's seeming monopoly on chicken for breakfast, it's perhaps no coincidence that Wendy's also plans to roll out a honey butter chicken sandwich on its new breakfast menu set to debut in January. So all indicators are, we need to brace ourselves for Chicken War II — at least, as long as none of the competitors decides to chicken out. Here's hoping they don't, since when fast food giants battle, it seems like we all win.