QSR May 2022

LEADERSHI P PROF I LE

One for the Record Books Popeyes’ famed chicken sandwich

wasn’t the end-all for the 50-year-old chain— it merely set the stage.

/ B Y D A N N Y K L E I N

Brand president Sami Siddiqui likes to say Popeyes is “50 years young.” While that might sound like something people profess at a weekend barbecue, there’s real weight behind it. In the five decades since Alvin C. Copeland Sr. opened “Chicken on the Run” in the New Orleans suburb of Arabi, an area with just over 4,500 residents as of 2020, you could argue no three-year stretch has been more active or formative for the legacy brand. Perhaps only Copeland’s decision, after sev eral months of tepid sales, to reopen the restaurant as “Popeyes”—named after Popeye Doyle from the 1971 film “The French Connection”—and switch from

POPEYES / BOLD MAN & THE SEA MEDIA

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MAY 2022 | QSR | www.qsrmagazine.com