America is clear about its preferred protein. It's chicken, especially fried chicken, in sandwiches,

tenders, nuggets, and preferably dipped in sauce. On average, each American eats 100 pounds of chicken

a year, and much of that comes from fast food chicken restaurants.

My colleague Heather Haddon, who covers the restaurant industry, has tracked it all.

Chicken is definitely booming.

You've got Chick-fil-A with their sandwiches.

And what makes the Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich original to me is the crispiness of the breading and the tenderness of the fillet. You've got Raisin canes with their fingers. Raisin-Cain's chicken fingers. One love. You've got Dave's hot chicken. What is the best fried chicken in America? I'll go try it. Honestly, I think it's

Dave's hot chicken. There's Wingstop, Zaxby's, Popeye's, Bojangles. I could keep going.

It is just everywhere, and it's the area of restaurants that's really growing. You know,

fast food in general is not doing well except for chicken and beverages. So chicken is one of the areas where

everyone is flocking. Hey, I'm the one who does puns around here. Just kidding. But one company

that isn't riding the chicken wave as much as you'd expect, the OG of fried chicken.

KFC. KFC. It's finger licking good. KFC. For decades,

Kentucky Fried Chicken was the biggest rooster on the block. KFC is really kind of the originator

of what we think of as fried chicken sold in mass, so sold at fast food restaurants all over the country.

And they've been doing this for decades and decades,

and yet in the last decade or two,

they've really lost their crown as the chicken champ,

as all these other newer competitors have come around,

and so that's presented a real issue for this company.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Friday, November 21st.

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