Popeyes or Chick-fil-A? Your Cellphone Data Knows Who Won the Chicken Sandwich Wars

When Popeyes launched its now-famous fried chicken sandwich in 2019, the fast-food chain didn’t just ignite a social media firestorm — it generated a measurable surge in store visits. Using smartphone location data, researchers could see the effect in real time. Foot traffic spiked after the product debut, plunged when stock ran out, and soared again upon relaunch.

For most of us, it was a meme-fueled food fight. For business scholars, it was a natural experiment.

In a new paper, Young Hou, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and colleagues show how smartphone location data — those constant pings from millions of devices — can reveal, in near real time, who wins and loses in competition. Their surprising finding: Popeyes’ success didn’t just leave Chick-fil-A unscathed — it also lifted foot traffic at nearby rivals.

That counterintuitive result is exactly the kind of insight smartphone mobility data can unlock, providing more detailed information in terms of geography, time and brand.

Why Smartphone Data Is a Strategic Edge

Smartphones regularly track the precise locations of millions of people worldwide.

Beyond powering navigation, ridesharing, and traffic apps, these digital trails offer valuable business insights.

In their paper, “Using Smartphone Location Data for Strategy Research,” published recently by Strategy Science, Hou and his co-authors show that mobility data collected from apps with users’ permission can be gold for researchers and business leaders.

“We find mobility metrics tracked by companies such as Advan to be highly correlated with quarterly revenue,” the authors write.

It means location data can serve as a reliable proxy for demand. Compared to quarterly financial reports, the data are timelier, more granular, and available for private as well as public firms.

The paper stresses that because mobility metrics are gathered in real time, they allow “event studies” that are nearly impossible with other data sources such as quarterly financials. This timeliness lets scholars and executives alike see the immediate impact of events such as product launches.

"Our goal with this research is to demystify the data and make it available for others to use," Hou says.

The Chicken Sandwich Wars

One of the paper’s central insights is that this level of detail transforms how we can understand competition.

Mobility data allow performance to be tracked at the store, brand, or even product level — a level of granularity that aggregated financials often mask.

Case in point: fast food’s so-called chicken sandwich wars, a viral social media debate that captivated the internet back in 2019.

It began when Popeyes launched its first fried chicken sandwich. With pickles and a buttered bun, it looked a lot like Chick-fil-A’s crispy chicken sandwich, long considered the industry standard.

Chick-fil-A, the biggest chicken chain in the U.S. by sales, tweeted: “Bun + Chicken + Pickles = all the [heart] for the original” about its own chicken sandwich.

Popeyes replied, asking “... y’all good?”

That was enough to spark a run on fried chicken sandwiches. The viral exchange sent customers flocking to Popeyes restaurants across the country, creating long lines and shortages.

So, did the war hurt sales at Chick-fil-A?

Hou and his colleagues used Advan data to test whether the chicken sandwich drew customers away from competitors. Surprisingly, it didn’t.

“The Chicken Sandwich Wars do not appear to have come at the expense of competitors, as no significant decrease in foot traffic among them was observed,” they report.

"Instead of it being an example of value capture, it's a story of value creation," says Hou.

The authors also found that Popeyes attracted “younger, richer, and more college-educated consumers” after the product launch. That demographic shift would be impossible to detect in traditional sales reports.

“This example highlights the potential of using smartphone location data to uncover insights that are more nuanced than would be possible with firm-level financials,” the authors write.

Even more surprising, competitors located within 10 miles of a Popeyes actually saw a positive spillover: their foot traffic rose 2-4% during the sandwich frenzy. In other words, Popeyes’ viral hit lifted nearby fast-food outlets rather than hurting them.

The battle continues today.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other chains are betting on chicken to lure customers and defend against record beef prices.

“Chicken — battered, breaded and served as a sandwich, tender or nugget — has become the fast-food industry’s weapon of choice, with industry heavyweights lining up against fast-growing upstarts and billions of dollars in sales on the line,” the Journal writes.

Know the Limits

Mobility data isn’t flawless. Some groups, such as younger teens, low-income households and Hispanic populations, are underrepresented. Online-only activity is invisible. Privacy regulations and evolving, smartphone operating system policies could affect availability.

The paper is explicit that mobility data “do not capture online activity,” an important share of sales. That limitation means researchers must be careful when studying sectors like e-commerce or technology.

That said, when a customer orders an item online but picks it up in a store, mobility data will track that activity. This data can be leveraged to show insights with online activities, to some extent. 

The authors warn that “researchers using mobility data to measure demand must exercise caution when drawing conclusions about target-market behavior,” and emphasize the need to benchmark against other sources.

Why It Matters for Leaders

Foot traffic data isn’t just for mall managers. It’s a strategic asset. Whether you’re gauging the impact of a product launch or monitoring a rival’s new store openings, mobility metrics can reveal patterns before they show up in revenue figures.

“Given the emphasis of strategy research on firm performance, a more granular measure of performance can be a key step forward,” the researchers say.

Professor Young Hou is co-author of “Using Smartphone Location Data for Strategy Research,” published in Strategy Science (2025), along with colleagues Christopher Poliquin and Mariko Sakakibara of University of California Los Angeles, and Marco Testoni of University of Miami.

To explore the code used in the research, visit: https://www.mobilitydataresearch.com/