The Latest Covid-19 Pandemic Shortage: Chicken Wings, Right Before Super Bowl Sunday

There was certainly no shortage of shortages in 2020 during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Toilet paper? Disinfectants? Flour? Yeast? Cotton swabs? Covid-19 vaccines? Seemingly everything that you need to have a good party seemed to be in short supply at one time or another last year. After all, who can throw a party, even a responsible social bubble only party, without cotton swabs and toilet paper? And with Super Bowl Sunday just around the corner, the latest thing to be in short supply is, drumstick roll please: chicken wings.

Yes, apparently the national shortage of chicken wings is “the worst it’s ever been.” That’s what Dan Klein quoted Chris Baggott, owner of ClusterTruck, as saying in a report for WISTV in Indianapolis, Indiana. Now people may tend to hoard toilet paper during an emergency because in the end there is poop. And there aren’t too many alternatives when it comes to dealing with poop. But chicken wings are not the same as toilet paper and should under no condition be used interchangeably. So why then is there a shortage of chicken wings?

This isn’t some kind of right wing conspiracy. Or a wrong wing one either. During the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, more people may have been winging it. According to the National Chicken Council, 2020 saw a 7% rise in the number of chicken wing servings from restaurants compared to 2019, even though restaurant visits dropped by 11%. This suggests that either the people who continued to go to restaurants were eating a whole lot more chicken wings (e.g., “hmmm, instead of the caviar or filet mignon, I’ll have the chicken wings”) or more people were ordering chicken wings via take out or delivery. Or perhaps both.

Regardless, 2020 seems to have been more of a chicken wing flick. The National Chicken Council called wings “pandemic-proof” food. National Chicken Council spokesman Tom Super, who is not related to the Super Bowl or Tampa Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, explained “If you think about it, restaurants like wing joints and pizza places were built around takeout and delivery, so they didn’t have to change their business model that much during the pandemic. Wings travel well and hold up during delivery conditions.” He added that chicken wings, “align with consumer desire for comfort food during the pandemic.”

People weren’t just buying wings from restaurants. The National Chicken Council press release mentioned that retail/supermarket sales had shot up by 10.3% to almost $3 billion during the pandemic. That included a 37.2% jump in the in-store frozen wing category.

This demand isn’t likely to drop this weekend. The National Chicken Council projects that Americans will eat a record 1.42 billion wings when the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for Super Bowl LV this Sunday. If 2021 is like 2020, around 99.9 million people will be watching the Super Bowl in the United States. That would mean about 14.2 wings per viewer or 4.2 wings per viewer if one person happens to eat a billion wings.

The question, of course, is whether everyone will be able to get all of those wings. Will the chicken wing supply chain be able to fulfill this massive demand. Or will it be like the Covid-19 vaccine supply chain and leave many people saying, “what the cluck?”