The Staggering Amount Of Orange Chicken Panda Express Sells Each Year

In 1973, Chinese-American immigrant Andrew Cherng opened the first Panda Inn with his father, chef Ming-Tsai Cherng, per Character Media, and it turned out to be a fortuitous move. Ten years later, the Panda Inn menu was converted to fit into the fast food sphere, and Panda Express was born. According to Business Insider, the franchise now represents "a 2,000-location empire around the world." Restaurant Business Online reports that in 2020, Panda Express raked in a whopping $3.8 billion dollars — and it might be safe to say that a fair bit of that several billion-dollar bounty can be attributed to their signature dish.

Anyone who has walked through the doors of a Panda Express is undoubtedly familiar with their most famous offering: their signature trademarked Original Orange Chicken. If you've ever had the chance to dine on this delectable, spicy-sweet chicken treat, you are far from alone. Panda Express hawks a veritable mountain of the stuff annually.

So what accounts for Panda Express' Original Orange Chicken's popularity? Perhaps it can all be found in its origin story. According to NBC News, Panda Express's best-selling dish was concocted by Andy Kao, the chain's executive chef, in 1987. Though the original Orange Chicken recipe likely tasted a lot like the sweet and spicy dish you enjoy today, it was slightly different, as the chicken used had both bone and skin still attached. 

In order to appease the sensibilities of American consumers, Kao began to use boneless meat; in addition to this, he turned down the head: according to NBC, he "dialed down the spice" by taking traditional whole dried chilis out of the culinary equation. According to the franchise's head chef, Jimmy Wang, this move was meant to serve as a "hybrid approach of bridging cultures, ingredients and flavors while respecting its roots," as he told NBC News in a statement.

It seems Panda Express' "hybrid" approach has worked, especially if you take a look at the cold hard data. According to NBC News, in 2021, Panda Express dished up over 115 million pounds of Orange Chicken that year alone — which, per the outlet, accounted for a third of the franchise's total sales. Unsurprisingly, in a 2017 press release, the franchise reported that over half of all Panda Express customers include Orange Chicken as a part of their order. If you divide that by the standard size of an Orange Chicken portion, that's nearly 41 million servings, though there's no accounting for the heaps of chicken doled out by the more generous Panda Express scoopers.

If you want to try your hand at making Panda Express Orange Chicken at home, you can use this copycat recipe. Simply fry up some small chunks of boneless dark meat, then whip up your version of their signature sauce, which includes both sugar and brown sugar dissolved into orange juice, as well as white vinegar and soy sauce. With all those delicious sugars and spices, it's no wonder why Panda Express sells such a tremendous volume of Orange Chicken every year.