KFC Or Popeyes: Which Fast Food Fried Chicken Chain Came First?

The fast food fried chicken game these days is crowded with power players, and ever since the chicken sandwich wars heated up, the competition has been fierce. In the United States, KFC, a restaurant chain once synonymous with fried chicken, was overtaken by Popeyes in 2023. Both franchises respectively occupy the third and second places behind Chick-fil-A in terms of market share, but KFC seems focused on regaining the ground it's lost.

Third place is a long way to fall for a company that had been serving up fried chicken more than a decade before Popeyes was founded. The Cajun-inspired Louisiana restaurant first opened in 1972, at a time when KFC already had hundreds of locations across North America — it was even listed on the New York Stock Exchange. While Popeyes initially struggled to gain a foothold, it has slowly but steadily expanded its footprint and presence to overshadow one of the most iconic brands in fast food. That's no small feat, though counting Anthony Bourdain as an outspoken fan certainly helps.

When People magazine interviewed Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen founder Al Copeland in 1984, the entrepreneur was already ludicrously rich off the success of his fast-food fried chicken franchise. Of course, he stressed his humble beginnings as a working-class boy in New Orleans who was driven by a spirit of competition — first against his fellow teenage coworkers, and then against other restaurants.

Still, despite Copeland putting in 16-hour days at his brother's donut shop, the much larger and more efficient KFC in town seemed to completely outpace him. "Here I was in a donut shop, breaking my butt," he said, "and Kentucky Fried Chicken came in at 11, 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." After a rough start as Chicken on the Run, it didn't take long for Copeland's renamed and refreshed Popeyes chain to muscle its way into KFC's territory.

But just as Copeland founded his business on grand ambitions, KFC was born to rule, too. Kentucky Fried Chicken first opened in 1952 — not in the Bluegrass State, but in South Salt Lake, Utah. Harland Sanders, who was christened with the honorific "Colonel" by the Kentucky governor in 1935, had traveled west to court restaurants that might franchise his hand-crafted fried chicken recipe, which was a hit at his Sanders' Café back home. After a string of rejections across the country, one of his first franchisees launched in South Salt Lake, under the famous name it's known by today. In less than five years, KFC had grown into an international business. These days, now that its headquarters is moving to Texas, KFC will soon be "Kentucky fried" in name only.