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Atlanta Is Home To Over 280 Fast-Food Chicken Restaurants

August 28th, 2015

A restaurant analyst estimates there are 280 fast food chicken restaurants in the Atlanta area. If the market is saturated here, no one seems to notice. Bojangle’s, for example, plans to open several new locations this year.

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Fast-food chain Bojangle’s has its eye on Atlanta with plans to open several more locations in the area this year.

That brings its total number of Atlanta locations to at least 45, or about one-third the number of local Chick-fil-A restaurants here. Add in Popeye’s with 10, Church’s Chicken with 32, and KFC with nearly 60, and it’s clear Atlanta has a lot of chicken choices.

“In order to make it, you’ve got to make it in Atlanta,” says restaurant analyst John Gordon of Pacific Management Consulting Group.

But is the market saturated?

That’s hard to say, says Gordon, partly because it’s hard to define a “typical” Atlanta chicken consumer.

“It’s not just enough to say the Atlanta market is ‘X,’” or made up of just one typical chicken consumer, says Gordon. “The Atlanta market is diverse.”

Gordon says because individual chains offer slightly different takes on the fast-food chicken concept, they’re not always competing for the same customers.

In fact, he says, each chain seems to thrive. And that’s not only in Atlanta, but globally. The bird is quite popular, long ago surpassing the hamburger as consumers’ first fast-food choice.

As Gordon puts it: “Chicken is just a good place to be.”