People in the U.K. Are Lining Up at Dawn for a Fast Food Chain's Chicken

Fried chicken chain, Popeyes, has garnered quite the following overseas.

Sunny Hothi | Getty Images

Sales have been booming in the U.K. since the chicken chain crossed the Atlantic last year — when the Oxford location opened in mid-September, it broke launch day records selling over 2,000 chicken sandwiches.

People were lining up at 5 a.m., with some visitors not having gone to bed the night before, Business Insider reported.

When Popeyes released its fried chicken sandwich in the U.S. in 2019, madness ensued with its instant success, and sold out only two weeks after the launch. Workers dealt with literal mobs of people looking for their fried chicken fix, with one worker in Newark, New Jersey quitting during her shift amid the chaos.

Popeyes' first U.K. location opened in a food court in Stratford, London in November 2021, and now has the highest sales of any of its 3,700 locations worldwide.

"We're experiencing strong sales, significantly above expectations, across all locations at the moment which is building an exciting energy in our business," Popeyes UK CEO Tom Crowley said in a statement.

Following the success, Popeyes has announced plans to open 350 storefronts in the U.K. by 2031 and has signed a lease to open a 6,000-square-foot headquarters in west London to "act as basecamp for its rapidly expanding team."

Related: Internet Culture and a Chick-Fil-A Feud Helped Popeyes Reach Unprecedented Cultural Relevance and Become a Top-5 Franchise

The U.K. locations don't serve other U.S. menu items like shrimp, chicken nuggets, rice and beans, or chocolate beignets, but it does offer a plant-based, Creole-style red bean sandwich not available in the states.

Still, it seems the fried chicken is what U.K. customers are after anyway.