Here is where you’ll find America’s best and worst fast-food chicken

DALLAS (KDAF) — Chick-fil-A offers the best chicken of any American fast-food restaurant, a new analysis reveals.

Restaurant furniture manufacturer and wholesaler Affordable Seating analyzed Yelp reviews from the top 50 fast-food chains across America’s 10 largest cities during July 2025, filtering for mentions of “chicken” to determine which restaurants truly excel. An average rating out of five was calculated for each chain based on all existing 9,888 chicken-related reviews, with an extra 20 three-star reviews added per chain to help balance the data for those with fewer reviews. Chains with fewer than 20 chicken-related reviews were excluded from the analysis.  

America’s Top 5 Fast-Food Chains for Chicken

Rank	Chain	Locations in Sample	Total Reviews Containing Chicken	Bayesian Average
1	Chick-fil-A	50	1948	3.73
2	Shake Shack	47	1831	3.65
3	Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers	48	165	3.47
4	Bojangles	8	77	3.37
5	Raising Cane’s	75	2808	3.31

America’s worst fast-food chicken

At the other end of the spectrum, KFC and Burger King shared the lowest ranking with identical scores of 2.09. 

Church’s Chicken, another chicken specialist, performed only slightly better with a score of 2.16, placing it third from bottom in the rankings. 

Giant chains Popeyes and McDonald’s received scores of 2.27 and 2.29, putting them at fourth and fifth from the bottom despite their popularity.