Thus Goeth Popeye's?

I have never believed in the original or the sole. I've long believed that a restaurant can be copied, reproduced or otherwise extended beyond the ability of one person to cook on a regular basis. Exhibit 1 was always Popeye's Fried Chicken. Popeye's chicken did not taste good for a fast food restaurant. It was good tasting fried chicken. It had its gimmick, the undercoating of red pepper, but that was hardly the point. It was what you wanted in fried chicken, not stale and soggy, not greasy, not bland. Along side, you got awful but in a good way or was that good in an awful way, faux biscuits. The rest of the menu sucked, but did you care?

The Popeye's branch near the Brickyard Mall, on Grand near Narragansett, is awful, dreadful, awful. The chicken there tastes far from fresh, like it was purchased by a food broker haggling away merchandise just before their drop-dead dates (some pun intended). And it is small, dry and fried to a papery crisp that seems so unlike the Popeye's that made me believe. Is it this Popeye's or all Popeye's.

Oddly enough, I find myself needing to go to the Brickyard Popeye's because the Oak Park Popeye's is even worse, but the Oak Park Popeye's is so readily poor in a you can see we are not trying that I can see that this branch is a real exception to any franchise rules. The Brickyard branch has visible management, and I see this management a lot. I know they are trying for something. What I am not so sure about, are they trying to be Popeye's on the cheap, or are all Popeye's trying for the cheap?

What do you say?