Zac Omar, CEO of 11-unit wing chain Atomic Wings, has been immersed in chicken thighs for the last 18 months, trying to find an option for his emerging brand and its franchisees to cope with swiftly rising wing prices.
The result of Omar’s research debuts Thursday in the form of Thigh Wings, a custom-sourced, hand-cut item designed to look more like a traditional chicken wing—but available at a much lower cost to operators.
“The Wingstop one is boxy,” Omar said. “It looks just like a thigh. We had ours cut so it looks like a flat wing.”
Omar is referencing Wingstop’s addition of its Thighstop menu in all of its stores last September, offering bone-in thighs and thigh bites.
Chicken wings became an undisputed hit during the pandemic, driving up prices and crashing the supply chain.
Omar said he’s currently getting cases of wings for about $110, while a case of thighs costs about $70.
“We have seven franchisees,” he said. “For them, they bore the brunt of the wing prices and COVID. They’re loving the cost on this and they’re hoping guests will react favorably to it so it can take over a bigger portion of their product mix.”
To incentivize trial of the Thigh Wings, Atomic Wings will give them out free to the first 100 customers in each store Thursday. Further thigh specials are planed during the year, he said.
Operationally, chicken thighs don’t change much for the New York City-based chain, he said. They’ll be served naked, in a traditional Buffalo style as well as in a breaded, fried version.
“They’re meatier, juicier, more flavorful,” Omar said. “They hold up better with delivery. That’s where the market has headed during COVID.”
Wingstop last month said it believed the worst of the wing price increases was behind them, noting that jumbo wing prices rose 41% during the fourth quarter compared to the previous year.
Then-CEO Charlie Morrison, who announced his resignation last week to helm 50-unit Salad and Go, said Wingstop would eventually take a more hands-on approach to wing production to mitigate pricing fluctuations.
“Whether that will be through strategies to partner with certain suppliers on dedicating volume to Wingstop, whether that has to do with acquiring or building or evaluating various ways in which we can involve ourselves closer to the production of the product,” Morrison told investors, declining to provide further details.
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