Popeyes

Al Copeland opened a fried chicken restaurant called Chicken on the Run in Arabi, a suburb of New Orleans, in 1972. It did not sell, so he reopened it days later with spicier, Louisiana-style chicken under a new name: Popeyes, after detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in the film The French Connection, not the cartoon sailor. He joked that he was too poor to afford the apostrophe.

For decades Popeyes was a chicken chain first and foremost. Then, in August 2019, it launched a chicken sandwich that turned into the most talked-about fast-food product of the decade, and suddenly it belonged on every list of the best burgers-in-all-but-name in America.

Thousands of restaurants in the US and dozens of other countries. Owned by Restaurant Brands International, the parent of Burger King.