The Fast Food Chicken Chain That Sells Nearly $1 Million More Than Competitors

There are many fast-food chicken chains, and people have their favorite drive-thru poultry. If you ask them where to find quick chicken, many will point you in the direction of places like KFC, Popeye's, or some of the other joints we've included in this ultimate ranking of the best fried chicken chains. There's one name you'll hear more than others. It serves an average of 1,500 customers per day at its more than 3,000 restaurant locations in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Canada. When you want chicken, you go to Chick-fil-A.

Chick-fil-A is a behemoth of a chicken chain that specializes in chicken strips, nuggets, and sandwiches that are so good they've inspired a copycat Chick-fil-A sandwich you can make at home. It's also the chicken chain with the highest average unit volume (AUV) in the industry, with $7.49 million AUVs for 3,109 locations. That's the amount sold per location across the chain –- and it's almost $1 million more than the restaurant that took second place, Raising Cane's with $6.56 million. Chick-fil-A also more than tripled the AUV of most of the other chicken chains, like Popeye's and KFC, with AUVs between $1 million and $1.99 million.

High-quality chicken is, of course, one of the main drivers of Chick-fil-A's success, and the company is dedicated to quality at every level of the process. Each restaurant in the chain uses only Grade A breast meat sourced in the U.S. (in accordance with Animal Wellbeing Standards) that is hand-breaded at each location. Menu items are crafted using real meat with no fillers, artificial preservatives, steroids, or hormones. Other ingredients, like produce, are delivered multiple times a week, so everything is fresh and ready to be made into an epic chicken-based meal.

You're guaranteed to be looking for one thing when you pull up to a Chick-fil-A drive-through. Okay, actually two things: Legendary chicken and waffle fries, which happen to be Chick-fil-A's most-ordered menu item. There isn't much else on the menu –- it's focused on the restaurant's famous chicken sandwich, with a few other options on the side. That small, easy-to-navigate menu style is just one of the reasons Chick-fil-A is so popular. The company also uses catchy, humorous marketing, reinforces a pleasant customer experience at each location, and emphasizes its commitment to its roots. All of these elements work together to underline already epic chicken, and boost Chick-fil-A to the top of the chicken chain world.