A Long Beach, California restaurant has come under fire after a customer discovered the fried chicken on the menu comes from fast-food chain Popeye’s.
Earlier this month, a diner named Tyler H. made the revelation in a one-star review of Sweet Dixie Kitchen on Yelp.
‘THE CHICKEN THEY USE IS FROM POPEYES! Before my friends and I got seated we saw them quickly bring in two large boxes of Popeyes to the kitchen. I wanted to believe that this was just a snack for the workers, but alas it was not,’ Tyler wrote.
Tyler said he ordered the Chicken and Waffles ‘to see whether or not they were serving Popeyes’ and his suspicions were confirmed when the tenders that arrived at his table were ‘stale’ and ‘tasted suspiciously like Popeyes’.
‘I kindly asked our waiter how they cooked their fried chicken. After checking he admitted that they do in fact use Popeyes. The waffles were also hard as rocks. The manager compensated us for the entire meal,’ Tyler wrote.
The owner of the restaurant, Kimberly Sanchez, responded to the negative review the next day, saying they ‘PROUDLY SERVE Popeyes spicy tenders – the best fried chicken anywhere’.
Sweet Dixie Kitchen in Long Beach, California has come under fire after a customer revealed that their fried chicken is from fast-food chain Popeye’s
Above, one of the two dishes on the restaurant’s menu using Popeye’s fried chicken. Single chicken strips usually sell for less than $2 at Popeye’s, and at least one of Sweet Dixie’s fried chicken dishes sells for $13
The restaurant gets fried chicken delivered twice a day from this Popeye’s in Long Beach, because they can’t fry in their kitchen
She explained that the tenders are delivered twice a day because their kitchen isn’t set up to fry food.
While she says they try to source from ‘small batch local producers,’ Popeye’s is the exception because she loves it so much and ‘ate a ton of it in [Atlanta].’
Sanchez went on to liken buying fried chicken from Popeye’s to buying vegetables from farmers.
‘We also don’t grow our own veggies – we purchase those- and if we run out of our own slow cooked pork, in order to keep our menu intact, I will order a batch of carnitas from the best place in Long Beach.
‘We don’t mill our own flour as we don’t own a mill or wheat farm and our coconut cake is made by our prep cook who makes cakes for private clients. Just FYI,’ She wrote.
The revelation was made by this customer, Tyler H, who dined at the restaurant earlier this month
Business owner Kimberly Sanchez responded to the negative review, saying they ‘PROUDLY SERVE Popeyes’
When another customer complained on Facebook, the restaurant replied ‘get over yourself’
She then punctuated the response with a mean-spirited remark: ‘So whatever to you and your little review like it was some great exposure – and whatever to you dude.’
Despite her passionate defense, the negative reviews continued to roll in after the true source of the restaurant’s fried chicken was revealed.
One Facebook user, McKenzie Elizabeth, said her real issue was the fact that it wasn’t publicized on the menu that the chicken wasn’t made on the premises.
‘Look if you use chicken from Popeye’s cool but at least be up front about it,’ she wrote.
The restaurant replied to her post by writing ‘get over yourself’.
Sanchez has since spoken out to a few outlets to defend her decision to use Popeye’s.
She says she decided to add fried chicken dishes to her menu about two months ago.
Because she can’t have a fryer in the kitchen, Sanchez said she tried a few different fried chicken options from places like Costco and Restaurant Depot, but didn’t like them.
Owner Kimberly Sanchez plans to continue serving Popeye’s at her restaurant
It was after picking up Popeye’s for dinner one day that she decided to add it to her menu.
‘I’m like “oh my god, why don’t I use Popeyes, this is the best chicken I’ve ever had”,’ she told the Long Beach Post. ‘And so we do.’
She told Fox that she’s always been upfront about where the chicken comes from, but doesn’t put ‘Popeye’s’ on the menu because of trademark issues
‘I walk in through the front door carrying the bag of chicken. The customers know where it’s from. Popeyes knows,’ she said.
‘We wrote it on our board in the restaurant, “Imported from Louisiana this week, thank you Popeyes.” It wasn’t a secret. We use the chicken as an ingredient in a menu item we made, we don’t use their sauces or anything else,’ Sanchez added.
Sanchez says she sees Popeye’s fried chicken as an ingredient in her dishes, and doesn’t see why she should have to publicize the fact on her menu.
‘For example, we make our quiches, but I don’t make the pie shell,’ Sanchez said. ‘I buy an already-made pie shell. Now sometimes, I’ll take a piece of puff pastry and I’ll make my own pie shell, and sometimes we run out of time and we don’t, but I still call the quiche homemade. It’s made from scratch. It’s a fine line, but where do you cross the line? I think as long as I’m using an item as an ingredient in a larger thing, then you don’t really need to call that out every time. And maybe I’m wrong about that, but then if I say Popeyes, do I say it’s a Marie Callender’s pie crust?’
Another issue that customers have been complaining about is the mark-up Sanchez has been charging. While single chicken tenders sell for below $2 at the fast-food chain, the Chicken and Biscuit Sandwich – one of two dishes which use Popeye’s chicken at Sweet Dixie – sells for $12.95.
Before the restaurant’s Facebook page was taken down, the ‘About Me’ said that ‘everything is made here’. Sanchez later said that she didn’t write that
Sanchez says the other elements of the fried chicken dishes make them worth the price.
‘Once you add the biscuit and the homemade coleslaw and the labor it took to make both of those things and all the other stuff. People make it sound like I’m taking just a chicken from Popeyes which you can buy for $7—which actually I’m having for lunch right now—and then mark it up to $14 and that’s not the case,’ she said.
Others think it’s disingenuous that a restaurant that prides itself on homemade food would sell fast-food items to their customers without telling them.
Before it was taken down, the restaurant’s ‘About Me’ page stated that ‘everything is made here – right down to our bacon jam and siracha [sic] sour cream sauce.’
Sanchez claims she didn’t write it, and she had that deleted from the page – though she does say that 95 per cent of the food is made from scratch.
Nelson Kerr, environmental health bureau manager, says that Sachez isn’t required to declare where the chicken comes from on the menu.
‘They could claim and say ‘proudly serving Popeyes Chicken’ and if they said that and they end up serving another generic chicken then you would have a truth in menu issue but if they don’t say anything then that’s just another approved source where they are getting their food from,’ Kerr said.
Sanchez says she’s reached out to the Popeye’s she buys from to set up an official partnership but has not heard back.
She told KABC that she recently received a call from a man threatening to sue her.
In the meantime, she continues to sell the chicken on the menu as she has before.