Sponsored by Chester’s Chicken
The National Restaurant Association rightly predicted 2023 would be the year of the chicken sandwich, and the versatile handheld is keeping pace in 2024. Rising to the trend occasion with family-recipe sauces, marinades, sides, and innovative spinoffs, family-owned Chester’s Chicken has been creating fresh, double-breaded fried chicken for 70 years and counting.
Now operating roughly 1,100 franchised locations across the United States and Canada, Chester’s Chicken has found a permanent home at Landhope Farms convenience stores in southeastern Pennsylvania—coincidentally in Chester County—proving that the convenience store foodservice market is a boon for the fast-food industry. According to Chester’s Chicken website, C-store foodservice sales are projected to reach $54.7 billion by 2027, and the 2024 NACS/NIQ cites a unit 1.5% increase from 2023, tallying 152,396 convenience stores operating in the United States.
Bringing chicken into the fold has undoubtedly paid off for Landhope Farm’s director of operations, Dennis McCartney, who in 2020 was looking to expand its existing food service programs. Its annual chicken sales before Covid were around a quarter of a million dollars, and just last year, with two Chester’s locations (a second opened in 2022), it hit $1.3 million. Switching from fully cooked frozen to fresh certainly paid off the capital investment of the equipment.
“We found that about 30 percent of our guests eat at Chester’s multiple times a week, which is a really high number. And another third will eat at Chester’s multiple times a month. Chester’s has this unique cult following with extremely loyal customers. We’re really fortunate for that,” says William Culpepper, vice president of marketing at Chester’s Chicken.
In addition to its unique product, Chester’s looks after its franchisees like family, with open communication, quarterly visits by regional reps, customized training programs, and sound marketing and social media initiatives that foster personal and professional relationships.
“Chester’s is a company that does not rest. They’re constantly looking for new things, and I’m not just talking about a new chicken sandwich or new promo. I’m talking about packaging cost savings across the board, monitoring chicken costs, and helping negotiate with distributors. They handle all that,” says McCartney.
“As the only C-store in the area with a fresh fried chicken program, when people hear Chester’s, they automatically think Landhope Farms,” says McCartney, “Which is itself the best marketing—word of mouth. We probably won’t open another Landhope Farms without Chester’s Chicken as a partner.”
As a possible next step in the brand’s evolution, Chester’s Chicken looks to explore additional non-traditional spaces, like the college and university markets. It recently launched a Chester’s Club for swag galore and the portable snack Boneless Chicken Bites with either stingin’ honey garlic sauce or sweet chili sauce—all of which answer the trending Gen Z call for spicy flavors and snackification lifestyle.
“One of our core values as a company is that fried chicken is fun. We have a recipe that has stood the test of time, but we’re always refining and looking to make everything we sell be up to that same level of quality,” says Culpepper.
Join the Chester’s family today and visit www.chesterschicken.com