This is the famous fried chicken chain that could disappear forever in the US due to bankruptcy

It’s been a tough year for major fast food chains in the United States with Burger King, Subway, Jack in the Box and Hwy 55 Burger Shakes & Fries all feeling the pinch.

The fried chicken sector is notoriously difficult to break into with established brands such as KFC and Chick-fil-A pretty much cornering the market and big hitters McDonald’s and Burger King offering their own chicken meals.

Fried chicken - a tough market to conquer

Consumers are wary of new businesses that appear and in general, can never agree on which chains offer the best fried chicken.

That appears to have been part of the reason for Sticky’s downfall - in spite of the widespread popularity of their gourmet bread-coated, fried chicken tenders. Formerly known as Sticky’s Chicken Joint, the New York City-based chain filed voluntary petitions for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code in April 2024.

At its peak, Sticky’s had 16 locations in New York and New Jersey. At the last count there were 10 - most of them in lower Manhattan. The company, founded by Jon Sherman in 2012, thought it had tapped into a niche in the market and it’s products, high quality, boneless chicken tenderloins, sold well initially.

Sticky’s popular Chicken Fingers

“At Sticky’s we use the finest ingredients, including fresh, never frozen, antibiotic-free chicken,” the brand states on its website. “We take great pride in what we do and what we serve. With a selection of over 18 sauces made in house, it is a labor of love. We believe this process is necessary to serve our customers ‘The Best Damn Chicken”.

The chain was hit hard by the Covid pandemic, had to lay off employees and was forced to diversify to survive. “We opened a store in February 2020, so we were in this rapid expansion phase and then the pandemic hit,” Sherman recalls. “We waited a couple of weeks to have a little better understanding of where the world was at, at least in the short term. We had around 170 employees in our restaurants at the time and roughly about a quarter of them said they weren’t comfortable working at this time. That was how we decided the layoff".

A couple of expensive legal cases further impacted Sticky’s finances and rising poultry costs over the past 12 months due to the avian flu outbreak have pushed it to the brink of no return.

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