CHIK'N closes temporarily due to 'huge demand'

CHIK’N, London’s new fried chicken restaurant from the team behind Chick ‘n’ Sours, has temporarily closed after facing unprecedented demand. 

The restaurant opened its 25-cover site on 6 July and saw regular queues after it offered 50% off food for its first week.

CHIK’N wrote on its Facebook page that it had sold over a tonne of chicken to around 10,000 customers, approximately 1,500 a day.

The restaurant said it had taken the ‘tough’ decision to close on the 18 and 19 July to improve the capacity of its kitchen.

“Turns out it might in fact be possible to love fried chicken a bit too much,” CHIK’N wrote.

“When you’re a brand new restaurant of course you make forecasts and plan ahead but we never saw that coming and it took a superCHIK'N effort to keep running at that level of volume.

“The short of it is even though we made an impressively low amount of mistakes, our systems and team were pushed to the limit and we were devastated we could not exceed everyone's expectations every time.”

The restaurant is using the two days off to debrief, before reopening on 20 July.

CHIK’N was created by Carl Clarke and David Wolanski, the founders of hipster fried chicken restaurant Chick ’n’ Sours, as a ‘guilt-free’ alternative to fast food.

The restaurant uses only free-range birds and pays staff in excess of the London Living Wage, while keeping the price of a basic chicken sandwich less than a fiver.