Chick-fil-A Claims the Crown for Best Fast-Food Chicken in America

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Article courtesy of Affordable Seating.

• Chick-fil-A tops America’s fast-food chicken rankings with an average score of 3.73 out of five, according to an analysis of Yelp reviews.
• Burger specialists Shake Shack (3.65) secures second position, outperforming traditional chicken-focused chains.
• KFC ranks at the bottom with a score of 2.09 out of five.

Chick-fil-A offers the best chicken of any American fast-food restaurant, a new analysis reveals.

Restaurant furniture manufacturer and wholesaler Affordable Seating analyzed Yelp reviews from the top 50 fast-food chains across America’s 10 largest cities, filtering for mentions of “chicken” to determine which restaurants truly excel. An average rating out of five was calculated for each chain based on all existing 9,888 chicken-related reviews, with an extra 20 three-star reviews added per chain to help balance the data for those with fewer reviews. Chains with fewer than 20 chicken-related reviews were excluded from the analysis.

Chick-fil-A secured the top position with an average score of 3.73. The restaurant almost scores double that of competitor KFC (2.09).

Despite being primarily known for burgers, Shake Shack claimed the second spot. The chain’s chicken proves popular with customers, with chicken sandwiches and bites helping it gain an overall rating of 3.65.

Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers secured third place with a score of 3.47, while Bojangles and Raising Cane’s rounded out the top five with ratings of 3.37 and 3.31, respectively.

Table: Top 5 Fast-Food Chains for Chicken

At the other end of the spectrum, KFC and Burger King shared the lowest ranking with identical scores of 2.09 out of five.

Church’s Chicken, another chicken specialist, performed only slightly better with a score of 2.16, placing it third from bottom in the rankings.

Giant chains Popeyes and McDonald’s received scores of 2.27 and 2.29, putting them at fourth and fifth from the bottom despite their popularity.

Zach Kanoff, SVP Chain Accounts at Affordable Seating, commented on the findings:

“With Americans spending their hard-earned money on fast-food every day, it’s valuable to know which restaurants are providing the best quality.

“These results show that specialization doesn’t automatically translate to quality in the fast-food chicken market. The fact that several burger-focused chains outperformed traditional chicken specialists like KFC highlights how competitive quality fast-food has become.”

Sources:

• FoodIndustry.com – Top 50 Fast-food Chains in the U.S.
• Yelp

Methodology

• We gathered the top 50 fast-food chains from Food Industry (retrieved June 2025) and the ten largest US cities from 2024 Census Bureau estimates, then retrieved all Yelp reviews for those chains in July 2025 and filtered for the keyword “chicken.” We computed each chain’s average star rating and a Bayesian adjusted rating (with 20 prior reviews at 3 stars) and ranked them by the adjusted score to crown America’s best fast-food chicken.

• We removed any chains that:

• • Likely did not sell chicken (Baskin-Robbins, Crumbl Cookies, Dunkin’, Krispy Kreme, Starbucks).
  • Had zero chicken-keyword reviews (Domino’s, Firehouse Subs, Little Caesars, Marco’s Pizza, McAlister’s Deli, Papa John’s, Papa Murphy’s, Pizza Hut, Taco John’s, Tropical Smoothie Cafe).
  • Had fewer than 20 chicken-keyword reviews (Moe’s Southwest Grill, Subway, Panera Bread, Jimmy John’s, Chipotle, Taco Bell).

Full table: Ratings for chicken at America’s top fast-food restaurants