Popeyes Says Tri-Cities Grand Opening “Biggest West of the Mississippi”

Last week chicken madness ensued with the grand opening of the first Popeyes Chicken in Tri-Cities. Now according to the GM of the local branch Jacob Ayala, the Tri-Cities grand opening in Kennewick was the biggest in the history of the company "west of the Mississippi." I knew it has been busy at that location since they opened, but that fact is absolutely crazy!

The amount business at the new Kennewick location is staggering. When asked exactly how big the opening was, Jacob would not give any official dollar amounts but did say "on the west side of the country, this was the biggest opening day ever,""the biggest opening west of the Mississippi."

I asked if the official numbers counted the amount of chicken sold or dollar amount of sales. Jacob said " its the dollar amount. We did close too....I'm not going to give numbers out because I don't know if I will get in trouble for that, but I can tell you that the big grand openings that we did (before) was less then half of what we did here."

Jacob went on to give his staff credit for the huge numbers. "You can only do this good or do these numbers if your moving quick," "that's why I give a lot of props to my crew, my management team and my crew out here. They are the back bone of this."

Jacob said they "hired on about 100 people and got about 9 days of training into them. We knew it was going to be a really big grand opening." He continued "there was just a monumental amount of cars coming through."

I asked Jacob what the most popular item on the menu is since they opened. He said " by far it was the chicken sandwich. It's by far the most popular item on Popeyes menu in general." "On the first day we sold well over 1,000 sandwiches!" He said that the apple pies and family meal deal also sold very well.

The lines have started to diminish some, so now is a great time to go check Popeyes out if you haven't yet at 240 N Ely St. along highway 395 near Clearwater Avenue and Vista Way.