Making Adjustments for Chicken Wing Shortage

Key Points:

• The chicken wing shortage has impacted all kinds of restaurants.
• Some have pivoted to using other protein sources, but not chicken-only restaurants.
• Wing It On is loosening up “tightness of spec” to adapt to the shortage.

Commentary:

The chicken wing shortage has certainly impacted all types of restaurants that sell the popular fried food. Some restaurants have adapted and changed and adjusted their menu to account for this shortage, but what about the restaurants whose whole product model is centered around the chicken wing? We talked with Matt Ensero, CEO and founder of Wing It On, about this, and he says they have decided to utilize the whole bird to help.

Abridged Thoughts:

Yes, restaurants are changing their menus, but for those of us already in the chicken game, it’s not quite that simple. At Wing It On, for example, we’re a single-protein concept that focuses on chicken. We can’t just bring in seafood or beef options to replace our poultry. So, for us, we’ve really focused on two key levers that have helped us pivot during the chicken shortage. First of which is adaptability. In the pre-COVID era, we always had an extremely tight spec on most of the products used in our stores, whether that be poultry or other items like take-out packaging and consumables. However, the chicken and other supply chain shortages of 2021 have caused us to loosen up a bit in terms of tightness of spec. 

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