Amid the colorful hustle and bustle in New Orleans, a donut maker worked
day and night to make ends meet.
He had come a long way from the days of when he was a poor kid, who was
simply happy to have shoes for his feet.
Still, he couldn’t help but look to the new restaurant down the street with envy.
KFC.
The popular fried chicken shop opened later and closed earlier but was doing four
times the business when compared to his.
Beaten down and jealous, the donut maker decided to bet on himself and make his
own fried chicken to compete with KFC.
It was only until one mistake after another that he finally came up with
a secret recipe that customers loved.
But, his risk it all mentality that led to his eventual success would
bring on monumental debt: $400 million.
Fortunately, one, ingenious move turned his luck around and allowed him to make $10
million a year — doing absolutely nothing.
This is the story of how a donut maker went from struggling to make ends meet to
building and saving Popeyes: one of the most popular, billion-dollar chains in the world.
The story of Popeyes starts in New Orleans, the city its founder was born in.
Alvin “Al” Copeland was born on February 2, 1944 to William Allen Copeland Jr., and Augusta Marie
Comeaux Copeland as the youngest of three sons.
But shortly after he was born, his parents divorced and his father left.
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Al and his siblings were raised by his mother and grandmother, with help from his great aunt.
The family lived in public housing in the Arabi region of New Orleans.
The family had little money at the time, and had to rely on welfare to survive.
Al was just happy to have a pair of shoes for his feet.
When Al was sixteen years old, he dropped out of High School and started working instead.
He took a job at the local Schweggman’s Supermarket where he worked as a soda
fountain assistant behind the snackbar.
He stayed there for a year and a half before getting a job selling baby food for Gerber.
By 18, Al had moved on from baby food to donuts.
By saving up money and selling his car, Al was able to open a franchise of his
brother Gil’s donut chain, Tastee Donut.
But after a decade of donut sales, something happened that grabbed Al’s attention.
When a Kentucky Fried Chicken location opened in New Orleans, Al was inspired
by its success, so he decided to make the move from selling donuts to fried chicken.
“Here I was in a donut shop, breaking my butt, and Kentucky Fried Chicken came in
at 11, closed at 8, and was doing four times the business,” Al later revealed.
“I said, if I can come up with a better-tasting fried chicken, I can beat these guys.”
Al wound up taking the money from his Tastee Donut franchise and invested in
a fried chicken restaurant of his own.
He called it Chicken on the Run and adopted the slogan, “So fast you get
your chicken before you get your change.”
But in spite of his sheer determination and clever marketing, Chicken on the Run
failed to get customers through its doors.
Month after month, the business lost money.
After losing over $10,000, it was clear to Al that if he didn’t do something
soon, the business would go under.
So he came up with a last-ditch effort to save his restaurant: changing his fried chicken recipe.
Instead of using the same old mild chicken seasoning he had started off with, he added cayenne
and cajun spices to give his chicken a kick.
Now all that was left to do was to see how the public liked his new recipe, with the future
of his restaurant hanging in the balance.
Al reopened the doors with a new name: Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken.
The name did not refer to the spinach-eating sailor who starred in old cartoons, but
instead to Gene Hackman’s character, Popeye Doyle, from the film The French Connection.
Having already lost more than $10,000, Al had staked the very future of his
business on a change in his chicken recipe.
He had bet big, and the stakes were high.
And the rewards were great.
Customers were taken with the new spicy chicken.
Within three weeks, Al had managed to turn his fortunes around.
He’d gone from losing thousands of dollars to turning a profit.
The fried chicken restaurant that had been struggling to keep its
doors open was now a runaway success.
And it was all thanks to Al’s secret recipe.
Soon, “Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken” became “Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken.”
After four years, Popeyes had grown so large that Al had decided to expand through franchising.
First, Popeyes spread to Louisiana, and continued to find success there.
Thirteen years later, it had grown to be a giant.
The chain even became the third-largest fried chicken chain in the United States,
with more than 700 locations across the country, and more international.
The only two companies ahead of him now were Church’s Chicken in 2nd place, and in 1st
place the company that inspired him: K…F…C.
But third place just wasn’t enough for Al.
He wanted to be number one.
Al was set on overtaking KFC, and had come up with just the plan on how to do it.
He was going to buy Church’s Chicken.
Church’s Chicken had started out of San Antonio, Texas and had spread to include 1,000
locations in the U.S.,Canada, Puerto Rico, and Mexico by the time Al decided to buy it.
Popeyes acquired the #2 fried chicken restaurant for $330 million and
took control of all their locations.
But the purchase was risky.
Popeyes had to go deep into debt to make the acquisition, and there was
no guarantee that it would succeed.
Al had made a huge gamble to try and win Popeyes the pot.
And he lost big.
Church’s Chicken had been a struggling brand when Al had first targeted it, and
buying it hadn’t made it more profitable.
The interest on Al’s debt slowly began to pile up, and soon, it was too much.
Two years later, Popeyes had to seek bankruptcy protection after failing to
pay back nearly $400 million in debt.
Chasing the gold had cost Al his own company.
Al was down, but he wasn’t out.
He still had one ace up his sleeve.
One that dated back to when he had created his company in the first place.
When he had first started up, Al had set up a second company named Diversified Foods & Seasonings
and had given it control of his secret recipe.
That way, every Popeyes franchise would pay annual royalties to DFS who controlled and provided the
spices — a contract scheduled to last until 2029.
Popeyes’ creditors took control over Popeyes under a newly formed entity, America’s Favorite
Chicken Company, but still had to pay Al royalties through Diversified Foods & Seasonings.
These royalties came to $10.3 million a year, which Al used to fund his entrepreneurial spirit.
As for Popeyes, it would soon soar to greater heights under new management, before
entering the ring for a brewing battle that would sweep over the fried chicken industry.
Under the newly formed AFC, Popeyes flourished.
Six years after the company had gone bankrupt and Al had been ousted, the company made
$1 billion in annual sales for the first time — thanks to improvements they’d made
to the menu, and their expansion to over 1,350 locations throughout the world.
Flushed with cash from royalties, Al opened new restaurants including Straya,
Cheesecake Bistro by Copeland’s, and various sea-food and gyro restaurants.
Al also tried his hand at owning hotels and riverboat gambling.
Meanwhile, AFC went public and sold 9.4 million shares at a price of $17 each.
And while it doubled the year after, AFC wanted to narrow its focus to Popeyes
instead of running two competing fried chicken chains, and decided to downsize by
selling Church’s Chicken for $390 million.
Four years later, Al tragically passed away from a malignant salivary gland tumor.
He left behind not just his businesses, but his son Al Copeland Jr., and a
number of charitable organizations.
Al had set up a Secret Santa to provide poor children in New Orleans
with presents during the holidays.
He also had established the Al Copeland Foundation, an organization that partnered
with the LSU Health Sciences Center in order to fund cancer research and offer treatments.
Six years after Al’s passing, Popeyes managed to regain full control of the secret recipe
that had made the company so successful.
AFC paid $43 million to Diversified Foods & Seasonings, now run by
the Copeland estate with Al Jr.
serving as the chairman of the board.
The Copeland family would no longer receive royalties from Popeyes.
Two years later, Popeyes took a page out of Al’s playbook.
Popeyes vice president of culinary innovation, Amy Alarcon, began experimenting with a new recipe.
Her goal was to make the perfect chicken sandwich.
Amy and her team handpicked buns, pickles, and seasonings.
After five months of experimenting, she had something that she felt was
ready to be presented to consumers.
Her confidence was well rewarded when taste testers gave it one of the best scores
she’d ever seen through consumer research.
It seemed like Popeyes was on the verge of something big…
Then… Popeyes changed hands.
Canadian-based Restaurant Brands International bought Popeyes from AFC for $1.8 billion in cash.
Under RBI, Popeyes joined other restaurant brands like Burger King, and Canadian-based Tim Hortons.
In the aftermath, RBI took Popeyes private, and stopped public trading of its stock.
Two years later, the now-RBI owned Popeyes prepared for a new product launch.
Up until this point they had only offered fried chicken, chicken tenders, and deep fried shrimp.
However just as Al had done before, Popeyes’ new leadership was looking to take on
the #1 fried chicken company in the U.S.
And they were doing it using the recipe that Amy had developed.
That summer, Popeyes launched their new chicken sandwich: a buttermilk coated, deep fried chicken
patty with pickles, mayonnaise, and a buttery bun.
It was delicious and popular, and it drew the attention of the country’s
largest fried chicken brand.
A week after Popeyes launched their new sandwich, Chick-fil-A tweeted out “Bun + Chicken
+ Pickles = all the love for the original.”
Popeyes replied with a tweet asking, “... y’all good?”
This was the beginning of what became known as “the chicken sandwich wars.”
With Popeyes and Chick-Fil-a tweeting back and forth online, other companies jumped in.
KFC, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Shake Shack all got in on the chicken sandwich competition.
Some, like KFC and McDonald’s, saw sales drastically increase even with late
entries into the chicken sandwich wars.
As for Popeyes, things were getting spicy.
While at first you could easily find the new chicken sandwich, by the end of the month they were all out.
Two days later, they were taken to court.
Craig Barr, a Tennessee man who had spent hours driving from one Popeyes location
to another in search of the chicken sandwich, sued the restaurant for deceptive
business practices and false advertising.
He even accused Popeyes of deliberately withholding the sandwich to drum up popularity.
Popeyes responded by stating that they had simply run out due to the
unforeseen popularity of the product.
But, the next month they did offer to let customers create their own chicken sandwiches
if they brought their own bun and used chicken tenders in place of the chicken patty.
The shortage may not have been planned, but it did certainly drum up popularity.
When Popeyes released more chicken sandwiches two months later, sales skyrocketed and
for a brief time, Popeyes even outsold the competition they’d been targeting, soaring
past Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich sales.
They even relaunched their sandwich on Sunday: the only day that Chick-fil-A is closed.
Since the launch of their industry-shaking chicken sandwich, Popeyes has beaten the odds
and not only overcome potential bankruptcy, but grown to be a titan in the industry.
Today, Popeyes has grown to over 3500 restaurants, and made over $1.3 billion in
sales during the third quarter of 2021 alone.
Throughout its history, innovation is what has lifted Popeyes up to greatness time and time again.
From the original, secret recipe that Al devised and saved his business, to the chicken sandwich that
has made the brand ubiquitous with fried chicken.
This is the story of how a highschool dropout built up a restaurant of his own and saved his
business through his wits, and a secret ingredient that took Popeyes from a restaurant struggling
to keep its doors open, to the chain it is today.
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