clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

A Trio of Chick-fil-As Are Coming to New Orleans, but Residents Are Very Much Loyal to Popeyes

Seriously, does New Orleans want them?

Three new Chick-fil-A’s are in the works for New Orleans
Shutterstock

Late last week, New Orleans city council member Kristin Palmer announced that the council approved plans for a location of Chick-fil-A in Algiers on New Orleans’s West Bank, celebrating the city’s first stand-alone location of the Atlanta-based fast food chain. Now, two more Chick-fil-A’s are in the works for New Orleans, raising eyebrows for those wary of the chain’s history of supporting anti-LGBTQ causes or, for some, of the notorious local developer behind one of the proposed locations, Sidney Torres.

Chick-fil-A and Torres’s plans were outlined in a letter sent to the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization this week, seeking approval for a Chick-fil-A on the corner of Tulane Avenue and South Carrollton Avenue in Mid-City. The address at 4068 Tulane Avenue is currently home to Torres’s NOLA Chick drive-thru restaurant, which he quietly opened a few months back in early 2021 (it was previously a Burger King, which closed in Summer 2020). The plans propose demolishing the existing building and building a new 2,600-square-foot restaurant set further back from the street. It would be drive-thru-only, with plans for two drive-thru lanes and patio seating for 16 people, but no inside dining. “This is a newer model for Chick-fil-A with exclusive service to vehicles and pedestrians of the Tulane and Carrollton corridors with outdoor patio space,” the letter to MCNO says.

A third Chick-fil-A is planned for downtown, reports NOLA.com, proposed for the ground floor of the CBD building that holds Dave & Buster’s and Hurts Donuts. It would be pedestrian-only, with an entrance on Loyola Avenue.

Currently, the only Chick-fil-A’s in New Orleans are also pedestrian-only, inside buildings on the campuses of Xavier University and the University of New Orleans. There’s a drive-thru location in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, which often has a long line of cars that spills onto Vets Boulevard. But do New Orleanians, what with our Popeyes and Raising Cane’s, but mostly the Popeyes, really want multiple area Chick-fil-A’s? Judging from the response on Twitter, maybe not — a NOLA.com tweet announcing the influx racked up dozens of side-eye comments about the chain coming to New Orleans and expressing skepticism of Torres’s involvement.

Eater has reached out to Chick-fil-A and Sherman Strategies, the company’s local land-use consultant, for comment on the proposed CBD and Mid-City restaurants and will update this story if we hear back. For the Mid-City restaurant attached to Torres, there will be neighborhood participation meetings on April 26, at noon and 6 p.m. For information on how to attend, see here.

Do you have a restaurant tip? Noticed a spot in your neighborhood opening or closing? Leave a comment or send an email.

Looking for restaurant recs or a place to chat about favorite restaurants? Join Eater NOLA’s Facebook group.

Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for the Eater New Orleans newsletter

The freshest news from the local food world