Free chicken sandwiches draw crowd to Mickey D’s
The things we will do for something free.
Call it a sign of the economic times, but an offer of free food drew a crowd to McDonald’s in Culpeper Thursday.
McDonald’s Store Manager Melissa Knight said that the store gave away 540 Southern-style chicken biscuit before 10:30 a.m. and had given out about 650 chicken sandwiches as of 3:30 p.m.
The giveaway was part of a national promotion where customers buying a large or medium drink were eligible for the free sandwich.
“It has been crazy all day,” Knight said. “There has been a line in the drive through all day and we’ve been slammed inside too.”
During the lunch rush alone, from noon to 1 p.m., Knight said 202 customers came through the doors for their free sandwich. That’s almost two customers a minute for an entire hour.
“You don’t get anything for free these days,” John Prather of Culpeper said. “For less than a buck and half I got a sandwich and a drink. That’s cheap dinner. Now I may buy some gas with what I had left over.”
According to its corporate Web site, the company anticipated giving away 8 million sandwiches and biscuits in the nationwide sampling event.
Giving something away is a great way to draw a crowd.
Chick-fil-A offers the first 10 people in line when a store opens a free meal a week for one year. That always draws people camping in the parking lot.
Here is Culpeper it drew a crowd last July. When I lived in Alabama, they had college kids sitting in the parking lot for a week.
I’ve done it myself.
I camped for Ted Nugent tickets in 1977. There was no doubt when Teddy whipped it out.
I slept in the parking lot of a Turtles Record Store, to get tickets to see Lynyrd Skynyrd. Yep, there’s a little redneck in me I guess.
Part of it is the event and the circus atmosphere.
Back in 1991 when the Atlanta Braves were making their first playoff run and Atlanta radio station brought in drums for fans to pound for the tomahawk chop.
As the playoffs neared, they said whoever banged the drums the longest would get playoff tickets. The girls got all excited and said they could do it forever.
I loaded them up and headed to the stadium. They lasted about four hours before they were ready to go home.
They still talk about that.
Enjoy the chicken, we don’t get much for free anymore.
Mitch Sneed is the publisher of the Culpeper Star-Exponent. A Georgia native, Sneed has been working for newspapers in the South since he was 15 years old. Culpeper is Sneed's first publisher's job coming to the area from Opelika, Alabama where he served as editor of Media General's Opelika-Auburn News. 
