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Jul 06, 2023

Man queues overnight in pyjamas on the pavement to win free chicken for a year at new Popeyes drive

Kevin Kiernan queued in the cold in his pyjamas for nine hours despite never having tried Popeyes before Want the best food, film, music, arts and culture news sent straight to your inbox? We have

Kevin Kiernan queued in the cold in his pyjamas for nine hours despite never having tried Popeyes before

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Fried chicken fans queues overnight on a pavement to win free fast food for a year at a new drive-thru Popeyes restaurant in Cardiff Bay Retail Park. There were also long queues at the drive thru as people vied to collect the free goodies on offer.

Second in line was Kevin Kiernan, 35, who arrived at the new Popeyes site at 2am on Tuesday, August 29 and waited in his pajamas for nine hours for a year's supply of chicken sandwiches despite never having tried a Popeyes meal before.

To mark the opening of the new Popeyes site in Cardiff Bay, the fast food chain offered free chicken sandwiches for a year to its first three drive-thru and pedestrian customers on its opening day today. After his wife tagged him in a Facebook post which detailed the offer, Kevin woke up in the middle of the night to let the dog out and decided to go and try his luck at getting a place in the queue.

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"My partner said they were giving free chicken for a year. I woke up at two o'clock this morning so I come on down. There was one person in front of me so I joined the queue," he said.

His original plan had been to stay in his car to queue in the drive-thru lane for free chicken. But when he arrived at the site just after 2am there were three cars already waiting. The other cars had beaten Kevin to it, each arriving at 7pm and 8pm on Monday, August 28 and at midnight.

Dressed in pajamas bottoms and a t-shirt, Kevin saw there was still only one other person in the pedestrian queue outside the building and decided to join the queue behind eventual first place Saimon Ali. Kevin, a postman from Ely, said it was "freezing" outside and it was not until 5am that he found his wife's coat in the car and put on another layer.

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The next person to join the pedestrian queue arrived at around 4:30am and Kevin explained others who had planned to queue on the pavement were better prepared - dressed in warm clothes and armed with a chair to sit on and snacks. Kevin said it was around 10°C at one point. On whether he ever thought about going home and giving up, he said: "Failure was not an option."

By 8am, more people had joined the queue and "fantastic" staff members arrived later on to hand out umbrellas, ponchos and free hot drinks to those queuing. The first 25 pedestrians and vehicles in the queue at Popeyes Cardiff Bay were awarded one free chicken sandwich per person and Kevin explained some people ended up queuing for hours just to receive this one free meal.

At around 11am, Kevin and the other lucky winners had their photos taken and were invited into the shop to sign up for their year's supply of free chicken sandwiches. The offer granted the winners three free chicken sandwiches per week for 52 weeks which could be claimed at any UK Popeyes restaurant.

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The Cardiff dad said he had never even tried Popeyes before today but added that it was "Probably the best chicken takeaway [he'd] ever had." On his plans for the rest of the day, Kevin said he hopes to go back home and catch up on his sleep before work starts back tomorrow.