How ominous! How portentous! How intriguing! Was ‘The Sandwich’ an end times prophecy? Or the source of Bio Terror? Or both?!
“What sandwich?” I asked, incredulous.
“The chicken sandwich!” She was trolling me now.
“What chicken sandwich?”
“The Popeyes chicken sandwich!! Have you really not heard anything about it?!”
No. I hadn’t heard a thing about it, other than it’s apparent existence by some popular YouTube food reviewers, whose suggested videos I ignored. ‘The Sandwich’ was just a sandwich to me—certainly not newsworthy. As a devoted Popeyes fanatic, it was certainly not worthy of the press release I received in my email.
Chicken sandwiches will never be the fun project that is eating chicken off the bone. They are delicious, project free food, and therefore not interesting. I prefer to fight for my morsels, and bones put up the best fight. Then you can dominate the bines by eating them.
That aside, my friend does not care about Popeyes the way she thinks that I care about it—I would never visit Popeyes for ‘The Sandwich’; I visit Popeyes for the value. (And The Chicken. With The Bones.) She cares for drama more than she cares for Popeyes. And oh was there drama: ‘The Sandwich’ was sold out everywhere.
As a lover of food gimmicks, hype alone should not be enough of a reason for any sandwich to become memetic. Take Starbuck’s Unicorn Frappuccino. It too was sold out everywhere, for a very good reason: it was awful. People (like me) wanted to experience why, before it was permanently discontinued, earning itself legendary status.
There was no gimmick associated with The Sandwich, and therefore no good reason for it to be sold out everywhere. In my expert opinion there can be no gimmick for a mere chicken sandwich; the few items that make it uniquely delicious (jalapeños, bacon, mayo etc) are canon. An attempt must be made to make it disgusting. Like a cinnamon sugar flavored filet.
As a fan, I never had a desire for a Popeyes sandwich, and therefore never noticed one missing from the Popeyes menu. Was The Sandwich a precedent for Popeyes, an establishment respected for its bone chicken? Was that the real reason for all the non-fan hype? It was too far a stretch. I eyed it suspiciously.
Chicken sandwiches, even from Popeyes, are not special. They can be found anywhere. Though a maker of great chicken, Popeyes does not have the same reputation that Chick-fil-A enjoys. Despite a portion of the public disagreeing with their religious viewpoint of homosexuality, the same public cannot resist purchasing their chicken sandwich. Chick-fil-A’s reputation for Chicken Sandwiches is almost as immaculate as Mary.
Mary is not hype, like the Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich (or all chicken sandwiches). She is real.
On my evening run I passed a Popeyes with a very long line. In the window was a clever ad featuring an empty Popeyes basket with breadcrumbs with the clever quip (Be Right Back!) clearly paying homage to the faux popularity of The Sandwich. I love Popeyes but this ad was too smarmy for me.
The missing sandwich was no longer a controversy, but a conspiracy: There never was a Popeyes Chicken Sandwich.
Without a helpful controversy to spark similar Chick-fil-A sandwich profits, Popeyes could not reasonably compete for a slice of the Chicken Sandwich market. Instead they expertly manufactured a conspiracy.
Bone-in chicken is a fan favorite, not an everyone favorite. Popeyes made its version of an everyone favorite—The Sandwich—with a marketing twist. How do you make everyone crave something? Make it unavailable. As such, the Popeyes chicken sandwich became internet newsworthy for being “sold out” everywhere.
The Sandwich that never existed was created and sent to social media trendsetters to stir the hype pot. They all lied about how they “went to the store to buy the sandwich.” Popeyes probably sold a few sandwiches to a few normal customers for show, but they did not “sell out.”
The problem was never that they sold out of the sandwich. That was the Popeyes solution to the age old sales question: how do we appeal to the normal person enough to get them in the door? Once they are in the door ready to purchase normal sandwich food Popeyes conveniently doesn’t have any more of the product the new customer wants, forcing them to order from the classic menu. Only hardcore customers will leave empty handed.
The new marketing game is trying to entice casual customers to try a “new” (old) product. Toppings are no longer creative, they are meaningless.
There never was a chicken sandwich. There will be now. In the minds and hearts of the people who never got to try one, it has become a temporary legend...a memetic legend...only in the age of the Internet such legends not only exist, sadly, they are common...
The missing sandwich was no longer a controversy, but a conspiracy: There never was a Popeyes Chicken Sandwich.
Without a helpful controversy to spark similar Chick-fil-A sandwich profits, Popeyes could not reasonably compete for a slice of the Chicken Sandwich market. Instead they expertly manufactured a conspiracy.
Bone-in chicken is a fan favorite, not an everyone favorite. Popeyes made its version of an everyone favorite—The Sandwich—with a marketing twist. How do you make everyone crave something? Make it unavailable. As such, the Popeyes chicken sandwich became internet newsworthy for being “sold out” everywhere.
The Sandwich that never existed was created and sent to social media trendsetters to stir the hype pot. They all lied about how they “went to the store to buy the sandwich.” Popeyes probably sold a few sandwiches to a few normal customers for show, but they did not “sell out.”
The problem was never that they sold out of the sandwich. That was the Popeyes solution to the age old sales question: how do we appeal to the normal person enough to get them in the door? Once they are in the door ready to purchase normal sandwich food Popeyes conveniently doesn’t have any more of the product the new customer wants, forcing them to order from the classic menu. Only hardcore customers will leave empty handed.
The new marketing game is trying to entice casual customers to try a “new” (old) product. Toppings are no longer creative, they are meaningless.
There never was a chicken sandwich. There will be now. In the minds and hearts of the people who never got to try one, it has become a temporary legend...a memetic legend...only in the age of the Internet such legends not only exist, sadly, they are common...
