The chicken wings at Yak-Zies bar in Chicago have been a money-making staple for owner Kenny Miller since the early 1980s. He sells 2,000 pounds of wings a week, 20 times more than the beef for his hamburgers.
While wings are as popular as ever at Yak-Zies, which fries and soaks them in spicy sauce, they are no longer profitable thanks to fast-food companies such as McDonalds Corp, Domino's Inc and the KFC unit of Tricon Global Restaurants Inc.
US demand for wings, worth about US$2.6 billion last year, has surged this spring as big restaurant chains began adding them to their burger and pizza menus. Prices have skyrocketed. Wings sell for twice what they did a year ago and now fetch more per pound at wholesale than chicken breasts, legs or whole birds.
"Fast-food companies are running the market," said the 66-year-old Miller, who started selling spicy wings shortly after eating his first one during a 1982 visit to Buffalo, New York, the birthplace of so-called Buffalo wings. "At normal prices, wings are reasonably profitable. Right now they are not." Miller hasn't increased the price of his wings to keep pace with the rise in his own costs. Wholesale wings are more than US$1 a pound, compared with US$0.50 a year ago. Yak-Zies sells 10 spicy wings for US$4.95, and Miller is mulling a 10 percent increase.
KFC, which sells mostly fried chicken, is preparing its second wing promotion this year, a company spokesman said. Last year, KFC only did one wing promotion. McDonald's added "Mighty Wings" to its 40-item menu of permanent promotions on Jan. 21, after test-marketing the product in several cities two years ago.
"When the fast-food corporations start to feature wings, it has a pretty big impact," said Joe Gilmore, vice president of food-service marketing at Perdue Farms Inc, a Salisbury, Maryland-based chicken producer. "You have an increasing demand on a somewhat reduced supply." While fast-food companies won't say how many wings they are selling, the chicken industry figures demand for hot, spicy wings is growing at an annual rate of 14 percent a year and accounts for about 35 percent of the 4.3 billion pounds of chicken wings produced in the US last year.
Wings weren't always such a hot item.
The triple-jointed chicken part is often more bone than meat. It was used mostly to flavor soups, though some bar owners figured they could serve them fried and heavily salted to make patrons thirstier.
The lowly wing became a national finger food during the past two decades, after the development of the Buffalo wing, which is marinated in hot, sticky sauce. Bars in western New York have sold them since the mid-1960s, and the popularity of wings spread with the expansion of pub-style restaurants, such as TGI Friday's Inc.
"That little spicy kick goes well with beer," said Joey Vartanian, general manager of Brother Jimmy's, a Carolina-style barbecue restaurant in Chicago. It sells wings for 15 cents each on Wednesday nights, when customers wait an hour to sit at a table compared with no wait on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Vartanian said.
In 1990, Kentucky Fried Chicken, now known as KFC, was among the first fast-food chains to promote wings. McDonald's and Domino's were among those who followed as they sought to boost sales and variety on their menus.
While wings in flavors such as honey-barbecue or oriental aren't as profitable as burgers or pizza, they are popular with customers as appetizers and don't erode sales of the main menu items, fast-food operators said.
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