Chili's just launched a new chicken sandwich line and made sure everyone knew it was aimed directly at McDonald's. The marketing copy practically dared fast food customers to upgrade. And you know what? They're not wrong to swing hard at that market.
But here's what caught my attention: this isn't about Chili's versus McDonald's. This is about the entire industry pivoting toward chicken as a margin play while beef costs stay unpredictable. If you're running a BBQ operation and you're not reading between these lines, you're leaving money on the table.
Why Everyone's Chasing Chicken Right Now
Layne's Chicken Fingers is pushing aggressive franchise expansion. McDonald's is suddenly loud about protein on its menu — something they've always had, but now they want credit for it. Chili's is throwing elbows. The pattern isn't subtle.
Chicken costs roughly 40% less per pound than brisket at current wholesale rates. For a lot of operators, that math is impossible to ignore. I had an operator in Lake Charles ask me last month whether he should add smoked chicken quarters to his menu. His brisket food cost was running 38%, which meant his margins were getting crushed on his signature item. Smoked chicken? He could hit 28% food cost on a plate that still felt premium to customers.
That's the real story behind all these chicken sandwich launches. It's not creativity. It's survival math.
What This Means for Your Smoker Capacity
Here's where I get opinionated. Most BBQ operators I talk to bought their smokers thinking almost exclusively about beef. Briskets. Maybe some pork butts. The rotisserie racks are an afterthought, if they're using them at all.
But chicken changes your production planning completely.
A brisket needs 12–14 hours. Chicken quarters? You're looking at 2.5 to 3 hours at around 275°F. That means you can run chicken production in the gap between your overnight brisket cook and your lunch service. Or you can dedicate a separate chamber to nothing but chicken and turn it three times in a shift.
The SP-700 handles this beautifully because the rotisserie system wasn't designed as a gimmick — it was built for actual production volume. I've seen operators load 80+ chicken quarters on the rotisserie racks and pull consistent results across the entire batch. No hot spots. No rotation issues. The temperature recovery after loading is fast enough that you're not adding 30 minutes to your cook time every time you reload.
(For reference: 80 quarters at roughly $0.85 wholesale, sold at $12.99 per two-piece plate — that's somewhere around $480 gross margin per full rotisserie load. Run it twice during a busy Saturday and you've just generated nearly $1,000 in margin that wasn't in your business plan six months ago.)
The Generational Angle Nobody's Talking About
I read something recently about how different generations interact with restaurants, and one data point stuck with me: Gen Z diners are significantly more likely to order chicken than beef. Part of that's price sensitivity. Part of it's perception around health and sustainability. Part of it's just preference.
Doesn't really matter why. What matters is that the 22-year-old who walks into your restaurant is statistically less likely to order brisket than the 45-year-old.
Now, I'm not saying abandon your brisket program. That would be insane. But if your menu is brisket, ribs, pulled pork, and nothing else, you might be watching potential revenue walk out the door. Smoked chicken wings. Smoked chicken thighs on a sandwich. A half chicken plate with two sides.
These aren't compromises. They're expansions.
Production Reality: What Your Smoker Actually Needs to Do
I had a conversation with a catering operator outside Houston last year. He'd bought a competitor unit — I won't name names, but it rhymes with "Schmole Schmickory" — and his main complaint wasn't the initial cook quality. It was consistency under load.
When he was running 50 chicken pieces, everything looked great. When he scaled up to 120 for a corporate event, the bottom racks were coming out undercooked while the top racks were overdone. Temperature variance across the cooking chamber was something like 35°F from top to bottom.
That's a problem you can maybe hide with brisket because the cook time is so long that things eventually even out. With chicken, you don't have that luxury. A 3-hour cook doesn't forgive a 35-degree spread.
He switched to an SPK-500 for his chicken production and kept the old unit for beef. Problem solved, but now he's running two different maintenance schedules, two different parts inventories, and two different temperature calibration protocols. Should have just bought the right equipment the first time.
The Parts Availability Issue
Speaking of parts. One thing the chicken-forward trend has done is increase smoker utilization rates across the industry. More cook cycles per day means more wear on thermocouples, door gaskets, ignition systems, and rotisserie motors.
I've talked to operators running import-brand smokers who've waited 6–8 weeks for replacement parts because everything ships from overseas. Six weeks of downtime isn't an inconvenience — it's potentially fatal for a restaurant.
Southern Pride manufactures domestically. When I order a replacement thermocouple or a door gasket through our parts department, it ships from existing U.S. inventory. Usually arrives in 3–5 business days. Sometimes faster if I call early enough in the morning.
This isn't a sales pitch. It's operational reality. If you're planning to run your smoker harder — and adding chicken production means you will run it harder — you need equipment that can be serviced quickly when something wears out. Because something will wear out.
Menu Engineering for the Current Market
Let me bring this back to the Chili's situation for a second.
They're not launching chicken sandwiches because they suddenly discovered chicken is delicious. They're doing it because their analysts looked at margin data, consumer preference shifts, and competitive positioning, and determined that chicken was the right strategic move.
You should be doing the same analysis. Not at a corporate level with a team of MBAs, but at your level, with your numbers.
- What's your current protein mix by revenue?
- What's your food cost percentage on each protein?
- Where's your smoker capacity actually being used, and where's it sitting idle?
- Which menu items get requested but aren't currently offered?
I ran through this exercise with a three-unit operator in Beaumont last fall. He was running his SP-700 units at maybe 60% capacity during weekday lunch. Added a smoked chicken sandwich to the menu — nothing fancy, just good smoked thigh meat with a house sauce on a brioche bun — and that single item increased his lunch revenue by 14% over three months. His smoker utilization went up, his labor hours stayed flat, and his margin on that sandwich was better than anything else on the lunch menu except sides.
That's not a revolutionary business strategy. That's just paying attention to what the market is telling you.
What I'm Actually Recommending
Don't chase trends blindly. But don't ignore them either.
The chicken wars happening at the national chain level are a signal about where consumer preferences are heading. You don't need to compete with Chili's or McDonald's. You need to take the insight — that chicken is a high-margin protein with growing demand — and apply it to your operation.
If your smoker can handle additional production, add a chicken item and test it for 90 days. Track the numbers. If it works, expand. If it doesn't, you learned something.
If your smoker can't handle additional production because it's already maxed out or because temperature consistency falls apart under load, that's a different problem. And it's probably time to have a serious conversation about whether your current equipment is actually serving your business or just occupying space.
I'm happy to walk through capacity planning with anyone who's trying to figure this out. Eighteen years of running my own place taught me that equipment decisions aren't about buying the shiniest thing — they're about buying the thing that makes your specific operation more profitable.
The chicken sandwich wars are just the latest reminder that the market doesn't sit still. Neither should your production planning.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | QSR Magazine | Restaurant Business Online
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Photo by SMAT MARKETING on Pexels.
About the Author: Donna spent 18 years as a BBQ restaurant operator before becoming an independent equipment consultant for commercial food service operations.