Originally Posted by masraum

I can't even imagine. I worked in a Popeyes in Potomac Mills Mall in Woodbridge, VA back in 1986. I worked there for about a year. The food was pretty tasty. On the weekends, the managers would go out behind the mall and count the number of buses in the back parking lot to help estimate the amount of chicken to cook. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be so busy that there was that much OT and selling out of food.

I'm sure things are different in the way the food is made today. When I worked there, we received frozen raw chicken in boxes that held something like 168 pieces, IIRC. Once the chicken was thawed, we'd put it into a large, clean, stainless steel sink. THen we'd pour a bag of "spice" (regular or spicy) over the chicken, and then you had to "stir" the chicken with your arms to get the spice thoroughly mixed in with the chicken so the chicken was evenly coated. Then the coated chicken (just spices at that point) went into the refrigerator. When it was time to cook the chicken we'd pull the chicken, put some into the "batter" then pull it out of the batter and put it into the flour, stir it around with your hands and then into a bus tub to take it to one of the deep fryers for cooking. The batter was a dry mix that was then mixed with a liquid (I think it was milk, but can't remember for sure). The biscuits were made by hand every day. We had a dedicated biscuit guy. The "nuggets" were also raw chicken that were manually mixed with spice and then battered and fried.

In the grand scheme of things, most of the food was "made fresh." The only things that I can remember came frozen and premade were the apple pies. I wonder how differently they do it these days.

I didn't eat chicken for years after working there, even if my dad grilled it. I think it was 20 years before I went to any place remotely like a fast food chicken (Buffalo Wild Wings) place after working there.