Abstract

The US-based Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Inc. (Popeyes), a chain of fast food restaurants, offered items like chicken, seafood, sandwiches, wraps, kids’ meals, sauces, desserts, and beverages. Headquartered in Miami, Florida, Popeyes was founded in 1972 by entrepreneur and culinary innovator Al Copeland. On August 12, 2019, Popeyes added a temporary item to its menu – Fried Chicken Sandwich. Initially, the product received lukewarm response – until Chik-Fil-A, Popeyes’ competitor, tweeted claiming its own chicken sandwich was the most authentic. Popeyes replied with a tweet which started a tweet war between the two. Soon some other quick service restaurants in the US joined the fray. The Twitter war made the Popeyes Chicken Sandwich famous and pushed up their sales so much that Popeyes’ stock of two months finished by August 27 and it had to declare the sandwiches “Sold Out”. It took the chain another two months to relaunch the chicken sandwich.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• To understand the bullwhip effect in supply chains.
• To explore the reasons for supply chain failure in the fast food industry.
• To analyze the use of product scarcity as a promotional tool.

Keywords

Bullwhip Effect; Supply Chain Efficiency; Responsive Supply Chain; Product Scarcity Marketing