“It felt really good to be the chef at Daytrip,” says chef and co-owner Finn Stern. In 2022, Bon Appétit named the vibrant Oakland wine bar and restaurant — known for its ambitious experiments with fermentation — one of the year’s best newcomers. In 2024, the James Beard Foundation nominated Stern as a Best Chef semifinalist. “But we just couldn’t turn a profit,” he says. He, along with wife and co-owner Stella Dennig, announced Daytrip’s closure last November.
Now, “we’re a really profitable business,” Stern says. What made it a financial success? Rotisserie chicken.
Earlier this year, Stern and Dennig reopened the restaurant as Daytrip Counter. Instead of miso-butter pasta that took one employee over a day and a half to make, they focus on only two things: rotisserie chicken and salads. “Having run a restaurant that really struggled to stay in the black, if not super in the red, it feels good to make that transition while feeding more people,” Stern says. At Daytrip Counter, a half chicken will run you $17, or $39 with a salad, side, and sauce.
Across the country, we’re witnessing a Great Chickening. This movement is occurring in both the predictable venue of fast food chains — KFC is doubling down on its chicken tenders, Taco Bell is experimenting with nuggets, Raising Cane’s is experiencing record growth — as well as in trendy, aesthetically minded restaurants for the natural-wine-and-Resy-notify crowd. Americans have grown increasingly dependent on chicken in recent decades as its main source of animal protein, consuming the equivalent of over 100 pounds per person in a given year, up from around 39 pounds 50 years ago.
As Daytrip Counter proves, there’s an economic underpinning as to why restaurant operators are so drawn to chicken concepts at this exact point in time and food culture. Because Americans can’t get enough chicken, chicken represents a level of reliability in an otherwise volatile industry; there’s a built-in, can’t-get-enough audience. As far as restaurant concepts go, chicken is barely a risk — and that’s exactly why we’re seeing so much of it. That’s why, as Stern says, Daytrip’s pivot was “largely a financial decision.”
Badaboom, a French rotisserie chicken restaurant, opened in Brooklyn this summer. Roast chicken and steak frites anchor Badaboom’s menu, though in terms of popularity, the chicken wins by a large margin. In an area with limited sit-down dinner options, owners Henry Glucroft and Charles Gerbier wanted to open a “small, nice neighborhood restaurant” that played the hits. “There’s a bit of an element of ‘everybody loves chicken,’” Glucroft says. The visible rotisserie machine “creates a bit more of an experience,” he adds.
Call it a continuation of the big bistro moment, in which restaurant owners are aiming to create places where diners will come back to often as opposed to places they’ll dine at only on limited occasions. The neighborhood restaurant generally means approachable, safe food: what lots of people want to eat on any given Wednesday, as opposed to anything that might be considered too challenging. That’s roast chicken and potatoes. It’s chicken schnitzel.
The reliance on familiarity works, according to Stern. Daytrip Counter is now open for lunch and dinner seven days a week, as opposed to Daytrip’s dinner-only service. “We went from a regular being someone who dined every month or two to a regular being someone who dines three or four times a week,” he says. Though prices are significantly lower at Daytrip Counter, the restaurant is bringing in more revenue.
For chefs, this approach to a menu can require a mindset shift. If Daytrip was about curiosity — consider its dishes like charred fava beans with candied sesame brittle and white jasmine ricotta — Daytrip Counter is about consistency. The salads, not the chicken, are where the restaurant can be ambitious, Stern says. (A layered salad of celery and cheese was a staple of the Daytrip menu.) “Daytrip was really dedicated to being weird,” he says. Now, “we want [Daytrip Counter’s] food to be craveable every day of the week.”
Evan Sung
Of course, even within chicken’s familiar formats, there’s room for experimentation. Some consider the chicken tender, for example, the mark of an unadventurous palate. That’s not the case at Mommy Pai’s in New York City, the buzzy chicken finger counter recently opened by the esteemed Thai Diner team. There, the chicken fingers are flavored with lemongrass, coconut, or garlic, soy, fish sauce, and coriander, and available grilled or fried. They come with sauces like Makrut lime hot honey and a sweet-and-sour sauce featuring passionfruit and pink peppercorn. Most items on the menu are also gluten-free. Despite these less-traditional twists, the concept is “very accessible,” says chef and co-owner Ann Redding, who cites the NYC institution Gray’s Papaya as inspiration. (One interesting trend that Redding has noticed: During the week, Mommy Pai’s sells more grilled chicken fingers; during the weekend, sales shift to fried.)
One downside of familiar foods like these, however, is that they can limit what diners are willing to pay for an everyday meal. Badaboom, which has a half chicken with potatoes on the menu for $32, has received criticism related to its pricing, especially considering its location. “It can be tough for people to realize, wait a second, I can get a chicken from Whole Foods — where [the store is] taking a loss on it — for less,” Glucroft says.
As much as chicken seems like a safe bet, there are inevitable challenges to a model that relies so much on a single ingredient. The recent outbreak of avian flu led Glucroft and Gerbier to worry about the viability of Badaboom’s concept (their chocolate mousse is also egg-heavy). The issues haven’t totally abated. According to Stern, his chicken prices have recently gone up, since record-high beef prices are driving increased demand for chicken.
“It does scare me, for sure,” Stern says. “The reason why we’re successful is because a lot of the city sees us as affordable.”
