COLUMBIA — A flurry of employees take orders, calling out “Next, please” from behind the counter of Zesto in West Columbia. The walls are lined with dozens of photos of Little League baseballs teams of years past. Waitresses stop and make conversation, others serve ice cream.
“If the good Lord hadn’t wanted us to eat chicken, he wouldn’t have made it,” Jody Barr joked to his two young daughters at their booth.
The Hartsville native found the decades-old burger shop known for its soft-serve ice cream cones and fried chicken dinners as a “broke college kid” at the University of South Carolina. When he stops through Columbia for work, he makes sure to visit Zesto.
He’s one of the dozens of folks to stop by the restaurant, which opened its doors in 1949, on a given day for lunch. And one of the dozens to choose the longtime joint over the newfangled chain chicken restaurants that are taking the city by storm.
In the past few years, a wave of fast-casual chicken joints have claimed their stake in Columbia in a fashion not dissimilar to the slew of crab shacks that came and went a few years ago or to the continually growing presence of automated car washes.
It’s not just your traditional Southern fried chicken that’s gaining popularity, explained Daniel Boan, a co-owner of mainstay chicken sandwich shop Drake’s Duck-in. People are finding more options that they like, such as Korean fried chicken and chicken wings.
“I think that’s ultimately why it’s having a moment … it seems like people just can’t get enough of fried chicken,” Boan said.
In the last year, nearly a dozen new chicken restaurants have opened or been announced for the Capital City. From the multiple iterations of Slim Chickens around the city to the other chains like Dave’s Hot Chicken and Guthrie’s Chicken, the openings beg the question: Why are so many chicken restaurants opening in Columbia?
To get to the bottom of the phenomenon, it’s important to understand the obvious factors that lead to retail trends, from car washes to brunch eateries, taking off in popularity. Factors such as customer demand, affordability and the versatility of poultry in cuisine have driven more businesses to focus their attention on chicken.
These things were driven, in part, by the COVID-19 pandemic, explained Mike Watson, a retail instructor at the University of South Carolina. Companies were strapped for cash. Chicken was cheap, readily available and could fit into a variety of cuisines. And consumers were leaning toward more health-conscious options.
“You have this perfect storm of people wanting customizable, convenient food that could be adopted in any of different ways in terms of taste and so chicken was the answer,” Watson said.
And although it might feel like it’s only Columbia that deals with cyclical retail trends as fleeting and flimsy as car washes and crab shacks, the truth is the trends are often reflected across the country. Since 2019, the fast food chicken industry generated $61 billion, a 7.2 percent increase in revenue over those years, according to industry analysis group IBISWorld.
It’s impacting industry giants like Chick-fil-A and Popeyes and smaller players like Virginia-based chicken franchise Cocky Rooster.
The latter announced earlier this month it planned to open its first South Carolina location in Five Points.
“Being in the Gamecocks’ backyard is the perfect fit for our brand,” Brett Diehl, president and co-founder of the restaurant group, said in a release announcing the Five Points location.
And for those in the social media comments of various news outlets lamenting the next chicken franchise to open in your neighborhood, we’re sorry to say that it’s not looking like they’re going anywhere anytime soon, Watson explained. And while trend prediction isn’t always certain, the fad could stick around until 2030.
“Another good five years before people are like ‘Yeah, I’m kind of done with seeing them on every corner,’ because it will get to that point,” Watson said. “That’s how car washes are now. I can’t drive two blocks without hitting car washes.”
Until that day comes, whether you eagerly await it or dread the day when you’re not, at any given time, within a few feet of a chicken wing, the few stalwart chicken eateries that’ve existed long before there were new chicken restaurants every week remain. And they don’t have plans of going anywhere.
“I think ultimately the reason that Drake’s, and some of these more traditional places, survive is because they don’t change a whole lot. We’re not chasing a particular fad … we’re cooking chicken the way we’ve always cooked it and it’s been a tried-and-true Southern staple and that’s never going to change,” said Boan, of Drake’s Duck-in.
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