‘Premiumising informality’ is a phrase that is well known in the UK restaurant industry. It summarises a common trend over the last half-decade to take a humble food and raise it up to make it a better, more exciting and desirable version of itself.
We’ve seen beer and ales get the Brewdog treatment, and even burgers and lobsters have paired up in an unlikely – yet highly profitable – combination. Now it’s happening to one of London’s favourite fast food staples: fried chicken. Establishments like Nick Jones’s Soho mainstay, Chicken Shop, and the more recent editions of Paul and Cara’s Bird, and Mother Clucker demonstrate the food’s evolution. Here’s the rise of the chicken shop.
Humble beginnings
Taking root mainly in deprived urban centers, chicken shops like Dixie, Mississippi, KFC and Chicken Cottage quickly established themselves in a number of London areas, including Peckham, Hackney and Brixton, and since then, their numbers have exploded due to extremely high demand.
As of 2008, it was estimated that there were 1,700 fried chicken shops lining the high streets of the UK, and that number has been increasing ever since.
The fried chicken appeal
You might be wondering what makes fried chicken so popular. The food’s ubiquity comes down to a number of factors including a low price point, its filling nature, and its ability to lure in customers after a visit to the pub.
Overall, fried chicken sells because it’s fast, cheap and filling.
A new generation of fried chicken restaurants
The desire to premiumise chicken started off in 2012, with restaurateurs Nick Jones, Jackson Boxer, and William Leigh and Scott Collins all opened chicken restaurants:
More recently, we’ve seen a new breed of chicken shop open with a desire to sell premiumised, free-range fried chicken:
What’s next?
Restaurateurs might flock to establish their own fried chicken restaurants, but with cheap fried chicken embedded so heavily into (particularly South) London culture, we predict that even with the rise of premiumised fried chicken restaurants, we won’t see the decline of the humble chicken shop. If anything, we will likely see both markets expand, making each viable profit makers.
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