One Benefit of Chicken Mania
For the past month or so, the nation has been obsessing over the advent of the Popeyes chicken sandwich, a feel-good feel-slightly-better alternative to the Chick-Fil-A standard. Amid the viral rush to taste The Sandwich, write about The Sandwich, lament the unavailability of The Sandwich, sue Popeyes over the unavailability of The Sandwich, and attempt to acquire The Sandwich via armed robbery, a heartwarming story has emerged from D.C. about how all the attention for The Sandwich has trickled over to a small business in Northeast thanks to an opinionated tweet.
Roaming Rooster, a food truck success story on Bladensburg Road NE, has reportedly been blowing up ever since musician/influencer Bri Hall shouted out the shop in a post that now has nearly 19,000 retweets and more than 46,000 likes.
While Popeyes is cool and all if you live in the DMV area you should check out Roaming Rooster in DC. It’s Black owned, and the founder Mike is Ethiopian born. He grew the family business from a food truck and has always been kind pic.twitter.com/kxS40kETlc
— LA HARA (Breaker of Combs) (@BriHallOfficial) August 26, 2019
Owner Michael Habtemariam, a native Ethiopian who spent time in Canada, tells the Washington Post that Roaming Rooster has sold about 5,000 sandwiches in the week since the tweet was sent. He says sales doubled the first day the tweet went out.
Along with his brother, Biniyam Habtemariam, and his brother’s wife, Hareg Mesfin, the owner started the Roaming Rooster food truck in 2015, pledging to sell free-range, grain-fed poultry. The business now includes four trucks and the store, which opened in Woodridge last year.
Roaming Rooster (3176 Bladensburg Road NE) sells five different types of buttermilk fried chicken sandwiches: a plain one with vinaigrette slaw, a Buffalo-style version, a honey butter and cheddar version, a Nashville hot version, and a club with bacon, lettuce, tomato and ranch. Washington City Paper readers this year named it their pick for “best fried chicken” in D.C.
In other news
- Taylor Gourmet’s first revived location opens next week downtown [Twitter]
- Add the introduction of $19 mocktail bowl to the #ThisTown list [Washingtonian]
- A building permit says new bagel shop will replace Epic Philly Steaks in Adams Morgan [Popville]
- College Park, Maryland, has a new Chinese hot pot place from Philly-based chain Là Tao [Hyattsville Wire]