Supermarket Perimeter - March 2023 - 40

Deli: Chicken wings
" Andy Reid versus his old team. A battle of the Kelce brothers.
Mahomes versus Hurts. But no Super Bowl story line is hotter
than wings. "
Big games inspire gatherings, and wings are on the menu. When
comparing the week ending Jan. 22 to the week ending Jan. 8 (the
final week of the regular NFL season), wing sales grew double digits
in both dollars (+11.5%) and pounds sold (+13.5%) within the Kansas
City, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Cincinnati markets, according to
IRI OmniMarket Integrated Fresh).
Buffalo
chicken wing
history
Picture this
1.45 billion wings laid end to end would
stretch from GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium
in Kansas City, Mo., to Lincoln Financial
Field in Philadelphia, about 62 times.
Enough to give four wings each to every man,
woman and child in the United States.
Phoenix's State Farm Stadium (home of Super
Bowl LVII) can hold 73,000 people. If 1.45 billion
chicken wings were distributed to the full
stadium, each fan could enjoy 19,863 wings.
Assuming Kansas City Chiefs' coach Andy Reid
can eat three wings per minute, it would take him
more than 900 years to eat 1.45 billion wings.
Dick Winger, who sold hot sauce to the bar, went on the road
with Dominic Bellissimo, the owners' son, to promote the
item and sell hot sauce, and the item gradually caught on with
restaurant operators around the country. The concept hit the big
time in 1990, when McDonald's began selling Mighty Wings at
some of its restaurants. KFC rolled out Hot Wings a year later,
and Domino's Pizza introduced its own wings in 1994. They've
remained hot ever since. McDonald's was back in the wing
business in 2013, and its Mighty Wings were featured nationwide
at most restaurants through the first quarter of 2014.
The rise of the chicken wing and its correlation to American
football, meanwhile, all had to do with timing. Cooking the
whole bird was trendy in the 1960s and 1970s, but in the
1980s, U.S. consumers started preferring boneless-skinless
breast meat, and wings became an inexpensive byproduct for
chicken producers. Restaurants and bars realized they could
charge low prices for the relatively inexpensive protein, and
due to the spicy/salty nature of the sauce, they discovered
that beer sales would go through the roof when customers
ate wings.
At the same time, sports bars with
multiple TVs and satellite dishes
were becoming more and more
common in America thanks to
rapidly developing technology;
and the most popular sporting
event to watch with friends
in bars is football. Wings
were easily shareable and
affordable, a great " group
food " to eat with other people,
and are the perfect pairing
with a pitcher of beer. And so
the pigskin-chicken wing bond
was born.
Source: National Chicken Council
40 - MARCH 2023
supermarketperimeter.com
Deep-fried chicken wings have long been a staple of Southern
cooking. But the concept of cooking wings in peppery hot
sauce was born in 1964 at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New
York, when co-owner Teressa Bellissimo cooked leftover wings
in hot sauce as a late-night snack for her son and his friends.
The guys liked them so much that the Bellissimos put them
on the menu the next day. Served with celery slices and bleu
cheese sauce, " Buffalo Wings " were an instant hit.
Nickolay Khoroshkov - stock.adobe.com
http://www.supermarketperimeter.com
Supermarket Perimeter - March 2023

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