How Restaurants Are Coping with a Chicken Wing Shortage During Football Season

 

Key Points:

  1. The chicken wing shortage is just a symptom of a larger supply chain shortage.
  2. Restaurants have approached the chicken wing shortage three different ways by either finding an alternative to wings like legs, admitting that they are out of wings or making pricing adjustments.
  3. Restaurants need to be proactive in presenting shortage information to customers.

Commentary:

The chicken wing shortage is a scary phrase to hear. Restaurants have been dealing with this dilemma for a couple months now. Some restaurants have made adjustments to the shortage, like WingStop who has started selling thighs as a substitute. MarketScale asked Chris Romani who is the CEO of Restaurant Smarts what the food and restaurant industry is doing as a whole to combat this problem and what lessons they can learn from this shortage.

Abridged Thoughts:

In the sense of: are chicken wings readily available? It is still a major problem. But as far as restaurants themselves go, a lot of them have begun to adjust and there’s a lot of varied solutions.

Some of the common solutions I see one of the main ones is that some restaurants have started to substitute chicken wings with chicken legs, so they can still offer something of that variety. Other restaurants where chicken wings are not a central feature or maybe a commonly bought item, they’ve just moved to not having them, just admitting that they’re out of them.They just talk about how they don’t have any in stock.

And then finally, of course, some have done a pricing adjustment. The question with the pricing adjustment really is, do you charge it as a surcharge? You just change the price of your wings. And what I’ve found is that I think just changing the price of your menu versus a surcharge actually goes over a little bit better with your clients.

 

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

Bouvet Island
To the Edge of the World: The 3Y0K Bouvet Island DXpedition and Its Youngest Explorer
October 23, 2025

In February 2026, an international team of 24 amateur radio operators will embark on a bold mission to one of the most remote and inhospitable places on Earth—Bouvet Island. Among the world’s most isolated islands, Bouvet offers no harbor, no shelter, and no easy way in. Yet from this icy outpost in the South…

Read More
DXpedition
Icom Powers 3Y0K: Ham Radio’s Most Ambitious DXpedition to Remote Bouvet Island (Part 2)
October 23, 2025

Few places on Earth are as inaccessible—and as coveted by amateur radio operators—as Bouvet Island. Located in the South Atlantic, this uninhabitable rock has long been regarded as the “Mount Everest of DXpeditions.” According to the DXCC Most Wanted List, Bouvet ranks near the very top of sought-after contacts, making every attempt to activate…

Read More
DXpedition
Icom Powers 3Y0K: Ham Radio’s Most Ambitious DXpedition to Remote Bouvet Island (Part 1)
October 23, 2025

Bouvet Island sits at the edge of the world. It is frozen, uninhabited, and almost impossible to access. Fewer people have set foot there than in space. That level of remoteness is exactly what makes it so valuable to amateur radio operators. The island ranks tenth on ClubLog’s list of Most Wanted DXCC entities,…

Read More
data fluency
Data Fluency and Human Connection Power Marketing Careers in the Age of AI
October 23, 2025

With new AI marketing tools appearing almost daily, it’s no wonder teams feel stretched thin. Yet beneath the constant buzz of automation and algorithms, the real drivers of growth haven’t changed: data fluency and thoughtful strategy – built on a foundation of accurate information. A recent Adobe study found that nearly half of marketers—a…

Read More