KFC's Bold New Sandwich Concept: Just Copy the Hell Out of Popeyes

You really have to chuckle, when a major fast food brand’s idea of a “NEW!” creation is just a thinly veiled re-creation of the exact thing that made their competitor famous a year earlier. It’s a phenomenon I’ve written about in the past, often with Burger King involved in some way—who could forget the time they copied the Big Mac exactly, 47 years after it was first created? But even by those standards, this new KFC chicken sandwich is pretty shameless about its intent to directly emulate the sensation created last year by Popeyes.

KFC announced the new chicken sandwich today, which will immediately begin its test run at 15 Orlando, Florida-area KFC locations. Just as the Popeyes sandwich before it copied the formula of Chick-Fil-A’s iconic chicken sandwich, KFC has likewise employed the exact same formula: a slab of Extra Crispy™ chicken on a brioche bun, topped with “crispier, thicker pickles” and “the perfect amount of the Colonel’s real mayo, and can be enjoyed as spicy or classic.” Why do we get the feeling that “the perfect amount” will correlated with “an irresponsibly gigantic amount”?

To their credit, KFC actually admits in the press release that their chicken sandwich badly needed an overhaul, in a move reminiscent of Domino’s classic “Yeah, we know our pizza sucks and we’ll try to do better” campaign from the early 2010s.

KFC’s Bold New Sandwich Concept: Just Copy the Hell Out of Popeyes