Philly Eats All The Chickens: BonChon Crippled By Demand

Seriously? It’s like you people have never seen fried chicken before.

The lines, the waits, the epic crowds–all of this has served to throw a big, chicken-smelling wrench into the grand opening plans at BonChon in Chinatown. First, they had to scale back their hours so they could focus on their dinner crowds during the grand opening weekend–dumping lunch service entirely and opening at 5pm. Then they made that schedule temporarily permanent, announcing that, for the time being, the hours were going to be 5pm-11pm only. That schedule still stands, and today they’ve had to scale back even more.

Did you think you were going to be clever and call in an order for takeout so you could skip the wait? Well not anymore. Last night, the BonChon Philly Facebook page announced that the shop was suspending over-the-phone takeout orders so that the kitchen could focus on the customers that were actually in the restaurant.

Now granted, you can still get chicken to-go. You just have to actually show up in person, put in your order, and suffer through the wait. And, of course, you can still show up for dinner and sit in the dining room (or at the bar) and have your chicken brought right to you. But forget the phone for the moment because, apparently, the place is just getting crushed. Here’s what the management team had to say:

The BonChon Philly Management Team has decided that we want to take care of and focus on either our take-out or dine-in customers. We have made the decision that it is best to accommodate our dine in customers first, since we have more control of that. We want to provide the best service and quality, therefore we are temporarily NOT offering OVER THE PHONE take-out orders until further notice.

So to recap: No lunch. No phone orders. Not exactly sure what they’re going to be able to scale back next if this drastic step doesn’t serve to stem the tide of fried chicken addicts, but my guess is a suspension of take-out service completely. Followed, of course, by Fried Chicken Martial Law.

We’re going to keep an eye on this developing situation for you, so stay tuned. Oh, and if you do decide to brave the crowds, drop us a line on the Twitters and let us know how things look from the inside.

BonChon Philly [Facebook]