Hundreds line up as Britain’s First Popeyes location opens
There were biscuits, just not the kind British people know.
“It looks like a scone,” Victoria Ubochi said after trying a biscuit, “but it doesn’t taste like one.”
One of the challenges for any company expanding internationally is translating the cultural elements of its brand to a new market. For Popeyes, the American fried chicken chain that opened its first outlet in Britain over the weekend, the challenge was biscuits, which in British English means cookies, not flaky, tender bread.
On Saturday, hundreds of customers waited in line for hours in a food court at the Westfield Stratford City shopping mall in East London for their first taste of Popeyes. Some said they had heard about the frenzy it stirred in the United States in 2019. Others had heard about the brand through references in rap music.
(“Then I get there, and all the Popeyes is finished, girl,” one Kanye West song goes.) Some Americans living in London said they were eager for a taste of home.
Tom Crowley, chief executive of Popeyes U.K., said that it was clear from focus groups that the typical British customer was confused about the concept of a buttermilk biscuit. Further complicating matters was that biscuits looked like scones, which are typically served with hot tea, not eaten with fried chicken.
Focus group participants, he recalled, would say: “‘Why are you giving me a scone with chicken? I have no idea what you are doing.’
“I guess if we ran with the research,” he added, “we probably wouldn’t have done it, if I’m honest.”
The team ultimately decided to put biscuits on the menu to keep the brand true to its Louisiana roots. “All that heritage plays well,” Crowley said. “The U.K., in our view, actually appreciates that great fried chicken is going to come out of Southern U.S.”
Raymond Braselman, who is from New Orleans, near where the chain was founded in 1972, and who has lived in Britain for 18 months, said he had not been able to find fried chicken that compared to what he grew up eating. “It’s definitely a bit of home right here in the U.K.,” he said Saturday as he neared the front of the line. “So I’ve been waiting for it for about two months now.”