4 Fried Chicken Chains You'll See Everywhere In 2025

A signature dish of the American South, fried chicken, is so popular that it sparked an inter-restaurant competition in 2019. It's debatable whether Chick-fil-A or Popeyes ultimately won the chicken sandwich wars, and the competition has since settled, but the demand for America's favorite meat remains high enough to elevate some well-loved regional restaurants into new American markets.

Louisiana's Krispy Krunchy Chicken, North Carolina's Bojangles, and Georgia's Zaxbys are all planning major U.S. expansions in 2025. Once completed, these will include hundreds of new locations across all three chains. But it's not just Southern fast food that's growing — the Dallas-based Korean fried chicken chain Bonchon is also expanding into a key market as part of larger plans to boost its availability across the United States.

But with the average American eating twice as much chicken per year as they do beef or pork, the broad popularity of and ravenous consumer demand for fried chicken is propelling these regional chains into exciting new territory.

Since 1989, Louisiana-born Cajun fried chicken chain Krispy Krunchy Chicken has excelled at the convenience store-based quick-service concept it was built on. That means you won't find many stand-alone Krispy Krunchy Chicken locations, but you will see them attached to gas stations, convenience stores, and Walmarts in 47 states — and you're about to see even more of them.

On the back of opening 605 new locations last year, Krispy Krunchy Chicken announced its intention to open even more stores in 2025. It currently has over 3,200 locations across every U.S. state except Alaska, Hawaii, and Montana, but it's planning a nearly 20% increase in KKC locations. Unfortunately, none of those are planned in Alaska, Hawaii, or Montana — yet.

The expansion plans are supported by KKC's expansion of the chain's delivery options. It recently became available on Uber Eats, DoorDash, and GrubHub, so you don't even have to go to the gas station for your fried chicken anymore. 

From humble beginnings in 1977 in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bojangles now serves its Cajun-seasoned fried chicken and some of the best fast food breakfast biscuits throughout the Mid-Atlantic and most of the South. But Bojangles is getting closer to true national distribution, with big 2025 expansions into Texas and the West Coast – and it's moving fast.

By the end of January 2025, Bojangles had already opened its very first stores in Las Vegas and Houston. However, unsatisfied with that debut, Bojangles is planning five more Las Vegas stores and seven more Houston locations, all of which will be open by the end of 2025.

Not only that, but the chicken chain announced that 2025 will also see its first restaurants in Phoenix and Los Angeles. Southern California is a particular target for Bojangles, with 2025 franchise deals targeting lucrative markets like Orange County, Riverside, and San Bernardino.

Zaxbys is a Georgia-raised fried chicken chain that has seen explosive growth since its 1990 founding, especially in the past few years. Growth continues as the chain breaks into the Mid-Atlantic market.

Beginning in late 2025, Zaxbys is opening its first three stores on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, eventually including West Ocean City. But Zaxbys is making bigger moves just up the Delaware River, with over a dozen stores slated to open in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Zaxbys wings and tenders will soon be available in two locations in Southern New Jersey, with four more restaurants to open under the same franchising group. And in Pennsylvania, Zaxbys has signed deals with a local businessman to open 10 locations throughout the Philadelphia area, including two that will open in 2025.

Born in 2002 in Busan, South Korea, Bonchon first brought the magic of its Korean fried chicken to the U.S. in 2006, and it was an instant sensation. Since then, the chain has grown to over 140 American locations, but in 2025, it will open in a new environment for its U.S. stores: airports.

Bonchon plans to open its first store in an American airport at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, the second-busiest airport in the Los Angeles area. Bonchon already has several airport locations in Asia, but the Orange County airport restaurant will be its first venture in the American market.

Bonchon's first U.S. airport store will open midway through the company's five-year plan to double the number of its American restaurants by 2028, with over 100 new stores either open or planned to open in the next three years, as well as experiments with new formats like ghost kitchens in Richmond, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and Bonchon's first hotel location in Bloomington, Illinois. Competitors like McDonald's and Chick-fil-A have already discovered that airport fast food is big business, being the fast food chains with the most airport locations as of January 2025. Hopefully, Bonchon's ambitious expansion plans will include more stores at bigger airports.