This video is sponsored by Incogn, the service that I have been using for years to protect my privacy by taking my personal data off the market. To sign up, simply go to incogn. com/compman and use code companyman to get 60% off an annual plan.
The link is in the description. [music] >> [music] >> Bone in fried chicken is a classic American meal and for some time now the two largest chains in the country to sell it have been KFC and Popeye's. Longtime rivals that have been using different approaches to capture that market.
Well, in 2023, it was big news when Popeye's surpassed KFC in US sales. I would say this is comparable to if Burger King were to surpass McDonald's, which has never happened, but it would be surprising and impressive if it did. To make this even more impressive, I want to point out that Popeye's is selling more food than KFC while operating around 500 fewer locations, meaning sales per restaurant have been significantly better.
To add some context here, KFC has always been the biggest of its kind, going back to the 1950s. By the 1970s, when the first Popeyes opened, KFC was not only the biggest bone-in fried chicken restaurant, it was the biggest restaurant of any kind in the United States. So, you can understand how throughout most of these past five decades, it has seemed nearly impossible for Popeye's to ever reach this level.
Yet, here we are. So, for this video, I think it would be interesting to explore this rivalry by comparing the two chains in six key categories. Starting off with the founders.
Obviously, KFC was started by Colonel Sanders, who I would say sadly has become more of a joke through most of their advertising lately. So, I want to make sure that I acknowledge some of the more impressive parts of his story. His father died when he was 6 years old, leaving his mother to support three young children, partially due to issues with his stepfather.
He dropped out of school and left home at 12 years old, where he worked a series of different jobs. By 1929, when he was approaching 40, he was running a gas station where he started selling fried chicken to his customers and perfected his recipe. By the 1950s, he was traveling the country full-time, using that perfected recipe to convince people to open their own KFC restaurants.
By 1964, it was already a national chain with hundreds of locations across the country when he sold it to an investor group. And that investor group proceeded to build the brand even quicker than before. Now, Al Copeland, the founder of Popeye's, has a surprisingly similar story.
Due to his father leaving, his mother also struggled to support him and his young siblings on her own. He also dropped out of school, though not until he was 16 years old, and spent a fair amount of time in other careers before focusing on fried chicken. In the early 1970s, he was operating a doughnut shop franchise when the first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant started opening in his area of Louisiana.
He said, "Here I was in a doughnut shop, breaking my butt, and Kentucky Fried Chicken came in at 11:00, closed at 8, and was doing four times the business. " I said, "If I can come up with a better tasting fried chicken, I can beat these guys. " So, Popeye's likely would have never even existed if not for KFC.
Leading me to my next comparison, the States. KFC, well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you, is heavily associated with the state of Kentucky. That is where Colonel Sanders first sold that fried chicken at that gas station and created the secret blend of 11 herbs and spices that later captured the attention of the entire nation.
Now, Al Copeland is from Louisiana and his first attempt to open a fried chicken restaurant was called Chicken on the Run, emphasizing fast service. Well, he struggled to make money with it. So after about 6 months, he shut down for a few days and reopened it under the name Popeye's that featured spicier Louisiana Cajunstyle chicken that proved to be much more popular.
It only took him 3 weeks to become profitable. And he later said that he believes the spices made the difference. Ever since, Popeye's has heavily promoted the fact that it is from Louisiana instead of Kentucky, going so far as to rename the restaurant Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen in 2008 that was promoted with a new slogan, Louisiana fast.
Going back a little bit to the early 1990s, Al Copelan actually lost control of the company following its bankruptcy, but was able to keep control of the recipes through a separate company that paid a royalty to use them until Popeye's bought those recipes for $43 million in 2014. The bottom line here is that KFC and Popeyes utilize distinct recipes that are built around spices that are associated with their respective states. However, there is a little twist to this.
Popeyes has since moved their headquarters to Miami, Florida. While KFC is in the process of moving theirs to Plano, Texas. The next comparison I want to make is the marketing.
For KFC, their biggest mascot has been Colonel Sanders himself. When he sold the company, part of that deal was that he would be an ambassador for the brand. So he continued promoting it almost up until his death in 1980.
And even then, they have kept that distinctive image alive in just about every way you can possibly imagine, maybe even going a little bit too far with it at times. For Popeye's, their longest running mascot was logically Popeye the Sailor, who appeared in various advertisements for about 35 years, starting early on in the 1970s. But oddly enough, the restaurant is not named after him.
It is named after Papey Doyle, a character in the movie The French Connection, played by Gene Hackman. I do not think there's any direct connection there, but it is a popular movie that was released within a year of that first restaurant opening. Moving over to KFC's most popular slogan over the years, it would have to be finger-licking good, which oddly enough originated in the 1950s.
When a KFC commercial showed someone licking his fingers in the background, someone called up to complain about it, and their response was that he was doing it simply because the chicken was finger-licking good. For Popeye's, their most popular slogan would have to be from that jingle, love that chicken from Popeye's that dates back to 1980. And then later in that decade, they started promoting it as America's fried chicken champ in commercials that would show people favoring it over KFC in a blind taste test.
Going back to my list, I would also like to compare their association with other restaurants. Most notably for KFC, they were bought by Pepsi in 1986, who were already the owners of Taco Bell and Pizza Huts. 11 years later, they were spun off into their own company that became known as Yum Brands.
For a while, they were even opening co-branded restaurants, combining KFC with something else they owned under one building. And that shared ownership has also led to some unique menu items, like the popcorn chicken pizza that was introduced in 2020. And most notably for Popeye's, that company merged with Church's Chicken in 1989.
It was their biggest non-KFC competitor at the time and proved to be a little more than they can handle. The debt associated with that merger was likely the biggest factor that led to that bankruptcy that soon followed. But a new owner took control of both brands, keeping them together under a parent company that was named America's Favorite Chicken that went on to acquire other notable restaurant chains, including Cinnabon in 1998.
However, they soon sold most of those other brands so it could reinvest and refocus their attention toward Popeye's. In 2017, Popeye's was acquired by Restaurant Brands International, who was already the owner of Tim Hortons and Burger King and would later go on to buy Firehouse Subs. I know there's a lot going on with all of this.
I'm simply trying to convey that KFC and Popeyes have been involved in multiple major restaurant brands that have been impacting them behind the scenes. Another impactful comparison would be chicken sandwiches. And let me back up for a minute here.
This whole video so far has been about fried chicken with the bone still in it. But chicken sandwiches without the bone have crept up to become the next big thing in fast food. Chick-fil-A, specializing in these sandwiches, actually surpassed KFC in sales over a decade ago, and even today remains above KFC and Popeye's.
So clearly, both of them have been motivated to sell chicken sandwiches. But it has been trickier than you might expect. In 2008, to go along with the name change in the rebrand, Popeye's launched the Big Easy Chicken Sandwich that failed to gain much traction.
In 2017, KFC launched the Zinger, which was already popular in other countries, into the US market. They even sent one into the stratosphere to help promote it. The following year, they launched the crispy kernel sandwich, a cool name, but none of it gained the level of attention that they were hoping for.
Then in August of 2019, Popeye's introduced the chicken sandwich and shortly after had a bit of a Twitter feud with Chick-fil-A that sparked the chicken sandwich wars. You might remember that it gained a lot of attention and Popeye's was selling more sandwiches than ever before. They even sold out of them for a while.
Then they were able to use that momentum to launch some other new menu items like their sweet and spicy wings that have done well. Meanwhile, KFC waited for over a year to nationally launch the best chicken sandwich ever, which, as you might expect, was nowhere near the sensation of Popeye's chicken sandwich. And I know it might be hard to believe, but these chicken sandwiches elevated Popeye's to a new level and helped close that sales gap that had always existed between KFC.
In 2024, when KFC introduced their new original recipe tenders, they did it with a commercial, claiming that the chicken sandwich wars are over and the chicken tender battle has begun. They also made the statement, "Why choose Louisiana herbs and seasonings when you can get the iconic KFC original recipe of 11 herbs and spices, one of the most protected trade secrets in the world. They even introduced it alongside their comeback sauce.
and the whole thing feels like they're now positioning themselves as the underdog against Popeye's, which has never really been done before. My final category of comparison is going to be their international presence. Because even though Popeyes is pulled ahead of KFC in the United States, I need to add some perspective by pointing out that KFC is significantly larger around the rest of the world.
Shortly after Colonel Sanders sold it in the 1960s, there was a significant push to establish the brand outside of its home country, opening the first international location in England in 1965, soon followed by many others, including Germany, Australia, and Japan. In fact, in 1974, they started promoting KFC in Japan as a holiday meal, and it has since become a tradition among many Japanese people to order KFC. To this day, they say that their busiest day of the year in Japan is on Christmas Eve.
But KFC's biggest presence is in China. They opened their first store over there in 1987 and have since opened over 10,000 of them, which is almost three times as many as there are in the United States. All of these combined to over 30,000 global locations, making KFC about six times larger than Popeye's overall, who remains mostly focused on the US market with about 70% of their locations being in North America.
So, even though most of this rivalry has taken place in the United States, that is no longer KFC's primary focus. Let me know in the comments what do you think of these restaurants? How have they changed over the years?
And which one do you prefer today? I think it is impressive that after more than 50 years of fighting, the underdog was able to catch up to its competitor that was once believed to be uncatchable. Finally, I just want to point out that I've made videos about both of these companies in the past.
So here I did my best to avoid overlap by focusing more on the rivalry, the comparisons, and presenting things in a different context. But I do recommend either one of those videos if you want to hear more about the individual stories. And any other thoughts you have about KFC or Popeye's or anything else in this video, leave them in the comments.
I'd like to hear what you have to say. Incogn is today's sponsor. See, you might not realize this, but there are literally thousands of companies out there collecting, aggregating, and trading your personal data, phone numbers, addresses, social security numbers, things like that.
And that can really become an issue when that data is obtained by the wrong people. I mean, it could be sold to scammers who use it to send you alarmingly convincing emails or text messages, or sold to someone who uses it to open credit accounts, file tax returns, or even commit crimes in your name. The bottom line is that you want your personal data off the market and Incogn can help make that happen by reaching out to data brokers on your behalf, requesting it be removed and dealing with their objections.
They have been doing that for me for more than 3 years now. And over that time, they have sent out 776 removal requests, 707 of which have been completed. They even have a new custom removal feature on the unlimited plan and family unlimited plan where you can point to any people's search site or other website where your personal information is visible and they will take care of it.
All you have to do is go to incogn. com/compman to sign up and use code companyman to get 60% off an annual plan. The link is in the description.
Thank you for watching.
