Popeyes' chicken.

The restaurant business is a tough racket. As anyone who ever watched a Gordon Ramsay show can tell you, it’s not uncommon for many of them to cut corners in order to goose profits or just make life easier for themselves. In theory, so long as you don’t get caught and you don’t make anyone sick, no one is the wiser.

The old adage is, “if you can’t beat’em, join ’em.” But in this instance, a restaurant in Long Beach, CA apparently decided if you can’t beat ’em, buy their food and then sell it as if it’s your own.

Tyler H. and friends recently decided to try out Sweet Dixie Kitchen, a comfort food restaurant in Long Beach that includes fried chicken on their menu. They were concerned when they saw employees walking boxes of Popeye’s Chicken right through the front door and taking them back to the kitchen. Tyler said he “ordered the Chicken and Waffles to see whether or not they were serving Popeyes to their customers.” When he realized for sure that this $13 dish did indeed feature Popeye’s tenders, he asked the waiter how they cook their chicken. With that, the waiter admitted they use Popeye’s chicken and then comped the entire meal. Tyler then went to Yelp to let the world know and that’s where the fun really begins.

Restuarant owner Kim Sanchez then responded in a long Facebook screed.

“We PROUDLY SERVE Popeye’s spicy tenders — the best fried chicken anywhere and from New Orleans — which are delivered twice a day. We also, in case you need to know, buy our gumbo from a friend who sells it at a local farmers market…We promote usually small batch local producers in our menu. The exception is Popeyes—we can’t fry at this location—and it the fried chicken I love so much and I ate a ton of it in the ATL. So I serve it.”

Now we here at The Comeback know a thing or two about bullshit and we are pretty confident in saying this is some superior bullshit here. Number one, you’re so proud of serving Popeye’s chicken that you made no mention of it on the menu and then refunded the customer when they called you on it. Number two, “delivered twice a day” almost certainly means we send someone to buy it twice a day. Number three, we no longer trust your friend or their gumbo.

In an interview with Fox News, Sanchez continued…

“I tried Costco chicken, I tried Restaurant Depot chicken, and then I went to dinner at Popeyes and knew this was the chicken we had to use for the store. It’s the best chicken…We wrote it on our board in the restaurant, ‘Imported from Louisiana this week, thank you Popeyes.’ It wasn’t a secret. We use the chicken as an ingredient in a menu item we made, we don’t use their sauces or anything else.”

That’s not how importing works, Kim.

And it’s a bold stance to call chicken an “ingredient” in chicken and waffles. That’s not how ingredients work either.

In perhaps the best part of all, Sanchez “reached out to the franchise owner of the Popeyes where she gets her chicken to try and create a partnership, but has not heard back yet.” That’s not how partnerships work, Kim.

Sanchez says she plans to continue serving Popeye’s Chicken on their own menu (at least until some distribution company and Popeye’s lawyers catch wind of this). So just know if you get the chicken there, you could get that same $13 dish for around $5 just down the road.

[Fox News]

About Sean Keeley

Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Editorial Strategy Director for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.

1 thought on “Long Beach restaurant caught buying Popeye’s chicken and serving it for $13

  1. such bullshit. if the owner, kimberly sanchez, wasn’t so arrogant with her response to the yelper’s initial review, then this uproar wouldn’t have blown up to where it is. she claims to make the biscuits and waffles from scratch but why does she buy pie crusts? that’s easy to make. she claimed in another interview that it was 4 months they’d been using popeyes and in that same interview, playing the victim, she said the reason they don’t do their own fried chicken is because they don’t have a deep fryer or “hood”….hello, you can effectively fry chicken in a wok!!! another response from her was “they don’t sell many of these popeye chicken dishes” ALL THE MORE REASON to buy a wok and bread some chicken breast cut into strips and fry them yourself!!! SUCH BS!!!

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