More Than Half Of All People Think This Restaurant Has The Best Chicken Sandwich

The chicken sandwich wars, as Delish reported, began in August 2019 when Chick-fil-A seemed to respond to Popeyes' encroachment on their claim to the best chicken sandwich with a tweet. Popeyes responded, then Wendy's, then everyone who had a strongly held opinion about chicken sandwiches. Ever since, any fast food brand that unveiled a chicken sandwich was described as either entering the chicken sandwich wars, as Forbes did for McDonald's in October, or restarting it, as QSR describes Zaxby's attempt to muscle in with a full-on military-style promotional campaign for their chicken sandwiches. 

While the sandwich wars are a little more than a media spat (that Zaxby's has taken way too seriously), we did wonder how the chicken sandwich appeared after a year of various chicken sandwiches bursting onto the culinary scene.

Instead of stalking each and every tweet regarding sandwiches, we at Mashed conducted a worldwide survey of 35,000 people, asking who has the best chicken sandwich.

The winners of the war fail to surprise. Out of the approximate 35,000 people who responded, 53 percent preferred Chick-fil-A and 27 percent sided with Popeyes. So, 80 percent of four out of five respondents favored one of the two brands that kicked off this wild competition.

Such an ending was predicted during the first chicken bust up by marketing expert Jay Baer in HuffPost's coverage: "If anything, Chick-fil-A's customers are even more loyal, and any conversation [about] 'which is a better sandwich' gives Chick-fil-A more mindshare, especially because there's no question that Popeyes is the imitator, in this case." As the International Business Times once noted, Chick-fil-A's focused efforts on brand loyalty are both intentional and a secret to its success. It has set customer satisfaction records and created an A-list membership program for especially good customers, which incentivizes already loyal consumers to become even more so. 

Still, that leaves a whole 20 percent to be divided into three parts, specifically Wendy's with 6 percent, McDonald's with 7 percent, and "Other" with 7 percent. The "Other" in this case included a smattering of Jack in the Box, KFC, Arby's, Burger King, Raising Canes, Church's and — well — others like, "My local place that I grew up, had the best everything, never to be duplicated." With perhaps the exception of Burger King, none of these had as consistent support as the other four, meaning that without being grouped as "Other," their singular die-hard fans would dissipate into decimal point percentages.