Ultimate Fast Food and Fast Casual Restaurant Bracket.....WE HAVE OUR CHAMPION!

Trill Withers3/20/2020 12:07 AM

Welcome back!

You can find selections/criteria from the Final Four and all rounds prior here. Today we get to our Championship game and what a journey it has been.

Championship Game

10 Cookout vs 3 Popeyes. What a slobber knocker he have on our hands. For all the gripes about how we got here, I think we can all agree that we have a solid title game on our hands. First, a look at our contenders before we get into the matchup itself.

Cookout was probably underseeded heading into the tournament so their run isn't too surprising, but still seeing a 10 seed in the title game is something special. I compared them yesterday to 2017-18 Villanova with their number of solid options across the board. The options are endless. There are so many that I've eaten there hundreds of times and there are still things I've never tried. Chicken sandwiches and hushpuppies and quesadillas and corn dogs and so on and so on. Also, as a North Carolina establishment, they have barbecue on the menu as is required by NC state law. If you want to play big, they have a counter for that. Play small? They've got an answer for that. Starting lineup having an off night? The bench can fill in, no problem. The number of milkshake options makes them a great choice when you're with someone eating there and you aren't quite "meal" hungry, but you could go for a blueberry cheesecake shake. But they also don't forgo the basic things: they have substance with their style. They have chicken nuggets for the kiddies, french fries for the boring bitches and Cheerwine floats for the dangerous. And you talk about a well-coached bunch, Mark! Great customer service like you read about. They basically said "let's give the public about 75% of what Chic Fil A does. Standing out in the rain handing out Polynesian sauce is a little much."

And let's not sell short the run Popeyes made to get here. They made what is maybe the toughest leap to make; the jump from good to great. They had a solid market for years among the Bojangles/Churches/KFCs of the world but couldn't seem to separate from the mix. Wisely, they pivoted and instead went after the chicken sandwich market where only Chic Fil A was a major competitor. Imagine if as a countermove, Chic Fil A started selling three-piece wing dinners! I'm not sure how I'd feel about it but I'll be damned if I wouldn't try them. They had a solid foundation and dropped a superstar into the mix, like Melo joining Syracuse, and everything fell into place. Mild/spicy tenders are fine but they aren't winning a championship. Butterfly shrimp are great but they can't be your second-best player, Joe House. Popeye's needed a bonafide star and boy did they find one.

GAMETIME

Popeyes best chance to win to their game is going to their star, early and often. The Chicken Sandwich hit the streets unlike any single Fast Food and Fast Casual food I item that I've ever seen in my life. Most fast food items are built around innovation, using chicken as buns/using donuts as buns/adding even MORE hamburgers to a hamburger. But not this one. The Chicken Sandwich didn't reinvent the wheel but it made it a shit ton cooler. It made it so cool that one you got the sandwich after it dropped, you had to post that you had it. And everyone had it. Popeyes got nearly $23 million in media value from people posting the sandwich in the first two weeks after it dropped. But alas! They leaned on their star player too much and sold out in two weeks. Foul trouble! And now, the Chicken Sandwich will have to sit the rest of the first half.

Popeyes picked a bad time to sell out of literally the only thing people were coming to buy, and Cookout capitalized. They brought out the seasonal shakes, watermelon in the summer/eggnog in the winter. They kept innovating by adding a chocolate chip cookie milkshake at some locations as a test run. They kept slinging quesadillas, cajun fries, and chili dogs. Double corn dogs as a side really got hot from outside and Cookout capitalized on Popeyes misfortune. In the meantime, Popeyes tried to make light of their situation by imploring customers to BYOB (Bring Your Own Bun) and make your own chicken sandwich by adding tenders to it. As a country, we banded together to tell them to go fuck themselves until the sandwich was back. They complied...over two months later. The sandwich dropped on August 12, sold out on August 27 and didn't come back until November 3!

That's basically having your best player score 20 points in two minutes, before picking up back-to-back fouls to send him to the bench with 17:21 left in the first half. The two-month hiatus is not putting him back in until there was 11:08 left in the second half. Their underestimation of how much people love chicken sandwiches led to unintended consequences for the rest of the team. Teammates tried as hard as they could to make up for their star, but they couldn't. We all saw the overworked and stressed out Popeyes employees pictures floating around. The day after the sandwich came back, someone got killed over it! There's no place for that in this game, Mark.

So the Chicken Sandwich comes off the bench with 11 minutes left and tries to go on a run...but who cares by now? The lead is 37 points, the rest of his team is gassed and Cookout isn't the type to let up on the lead. They're perfectly content letting the Sandwich shoot as many times as he wants to get his numbers. He finishes with 45 points, but it took him 12-29 FG shooting to get there. The Sandwich checks out to a standing ovation from the crowd, but Cookout has the walkons lined up at the scorer's table ready to check-in. This one is over folks. Cookout is your 2020 Ultimate Fast Food and Fast Casual Restaurant Champion!

And that will do it for our tournament. Thanks to Jeff D. Lowe and all the voters for putting this together. Thank you all for reading/sharing/agreeing/disagreeing all the way here to our final matchup. Hopefully, you're staying indoors when necessary, resting up and washing up. Until next time.