Chick's new breakfast options save porkers

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Dec 31, 2004 | by BILL REED THE GAZETTE

Chick-fil-A has been saving cows from the slaughter house for years now, serving chicken for lunch and dinner instead of hamburgers.

The fast-food chain is spreading its blanket of mercy over pigs as well as it moves into the breakfast market.

Forget about ham, bacon and sausage. Against the weight of tradition, Chick-fil-A is serving cluckers in the morning.

On the expanded breakfast menu are the breakfast bagel ($2.85) with chicken and eggs on a bagel, the Chick-n-Minis ($2.39) bite- sized chicken pieces inside tiny biscuits, and burritos ($1.99) stuffed with eggs and -- you guessed it -- chicken. These new options make the ol' chicken on a biscuit look downright frumpy.

Employees at Chick-fil-A told me the burritos and Chick-n-Minis are big sellers. But I decided to conduct an experiment of my own, spreading out the array of break- fast items in the middle of the office and watching what happened.

Perhaps people at your office aren't ravenous, but around here, you can lose fingers when food shows up. We call the food table "the trough," and for good reason. Predictably, my co-workers swarmed around the snacks for the feeding frenzy.

The reaction at first went like this -- Chicken? For breakfast? Then the scene played out like a Chick-fil-A commercial, with the doubters being won over by the idea of poultry before noon.

"I'm not big on chicken for breakfast," said an outdoors reporter as she hoisted a Chick-n-Mini. "OK, those are good."

A news reporter had a similar reaction: "Chicken for breakfast? Sounds weird, but my taste buds didn't rebel and scream, 'Wait, that's lunch stuff!'"

Hey, if Bloody Marys make vodka acceptable in the morning, is chicken really that much of a stretch?

One cynical cop reporter thought so. "Let me know when the chicken for lunch is here," she said.

"I loved the chicken in a biscuit thingie (the Chick-n-Mini). The biscuit had just a tinge of sweetness and the whole thing was very tasty," said one hungry copy editor.

"And the burrito is stunningly wonderful."

Wow. Stunningly wonderful? I reserve compliments like that for ski runs and sex, but to each his own.

The chicken burrito and the Chick-n-Mini (the one with just a hint of sweetness) were the big winners, just as our friendly Chickfil-A workers predicted.

If the porkers around here are any indication, a few real porkers might escape the axe at breakfast.

Mmmm, tastes like chicken.

(Locations inside The Citadel mall, Chapel Hills Mall, and at Powers and North Carefree)