Why Aren't Chicken Nuggets Popular Anymore?

Chicken nuggets used to be prom kings. Now, they’re sitting alone at lunch. While Americans ate 2.3 billion servings of nuggets in restaurants last year, the item has begun declining in popularity and disappearing from menus, according to a recent story by CNBC. But why?

CNBC reports that while conducting an informal poll in Times Square, “no one knew exactly what is in a chicken nugget.” Perhaps the childhood favorite hasn’t recovered from the since-debunked “pink slime” debacle of 2012. Maybe the food item has been backed into a corner of stagnation, unable to update what it means for chicken to be a nugget. After all, competition like chicken strips and chicken fingers have a more sophisticated reputation in addition to a higher profit margin.

“I don’t really see how they’re going to make a comeback in the future because it’s not a product that most restaurants, especially in fast food, drive their innovation around,” said Dean Small, CEO of Synergy Restaurant Consultants in the article. “Chicken nuggets are an incremental purchase, it’s like an add-on.”