Why You'll Never Get To Order Fried Chicken From Culver's Again

The customers' favorite menu items aren't always the employees' favorites to make, especially when it comes to fast food restaurants. Speed and convenience are the name of the game, and that's something that Culver's customers learned the hard way. The chain's beloved fried chicken, which took just a few minutes to munch on, frustrated the employees with a tedious prep and long cooking time, ultimately resulting in it being permanently booted off the menu.

The raw chicken needed to be breaded by hand, which apparently took around five minutes, and then it took an additional 15 to 20 minutes to cook. For a quick-service restaurant, that's a significant amount of time spent on one dish. The chicken was also constantly taking up valuable space in the limited fryers, setting back other orders. Culver's finally pulled the plug on it in 2016, and, according to many online reports, the employees were extremely happy to see it go.

Even though some customers still reminisce about the fried chicken nearly a decade later, others have pointed out that it wasn't a particularly well-selling item to begin with. Culver's is mostly known for its lineup of beefy ButterBurgers and for boasting the best frozen custard, so chicken isn't the chain's top priority.

According to one insightful Reddit user on a thread discussing the fried chicken's discontinuation, there may have been another reason for the chicken's discontinuation. "The memo from Culver's franchising during the elimination process clearly highlighted safety as one of the biggest reasons to eliminate," the user noted. The fried chicken was stored and put in the fryer raw, which is different from Culver's other poultry products that come to the restaurants pre-cooked and are then fried to order. Since the chain famously advertises its burgers are made from "fresh, never frozen beef," you might be wondering why the fresh chicken was such a big deal.

Per Healthline, "Compared with other meats, chicken tends to contain more harmful bacteria like Salmonella. It also has a more porous structure, allowing pathogens to penetrate deep into the meat." This makes it a bigger food safety issue in the fast-paced environment of a quick-service restaurant, especially since the nature of fried chicken requires a fair amount of handling during prep time. Culver's is therefore unlikely to ever bring that menu item back, but you can still get the classic Americana food at any one of the 45 best fried chicken restaurants in the United States.