VERDICT: POPEYES SNATCHES THE CROWN! The Crowd Picks Fried Chicken Over McDonald's

Hold the front door and put the kettle on, dears. The crowd has spoken, and it didn't pick the golden arches. In the fight over the best fast food franchise, judged on taste, value, consistency and that thing you young people call "brand experience", the early winner is Popeyes, the chicken house with the crunchy batter. McDonald's, the place that has fed half the planet at some point, comes in second, like a prize marrow beaten at the village show by a cheeky little courgette.

There's no official scoreboard for these seven chains in one place, so I went looking for how grown-ups usually measure this sort of thing. The usual yardstick is the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which, according to Wikipedia, interviews hundreds of thousands of customers a year and puts out new scores every month. Funnily enough, the newest name at the top of that index isn't on our ballot at all. In a prospectus filed with the SEC, the sandwich chain Jersey Mike's says it entered the restaurant study for the first time with a score of eighty-four out of a hundred and knocked Chick-fil-A off the top spot after eleven years. That's the company's own account, mind, not an independent survey, so I'm taking it with a pinch of salt. And a study of Jollibee customers during the pandemic found that good service did more for customer happiness than the food, the prices or even the COVID rules. Any grandmother could have told you that: people remember a kind face at the counter longer than they remember the gravy.

Now for the Morfi numbers. On this opinion market, where people put real money behind their opinions, Popeyes sits at 24% consensus and McDonald's at 15%. The rest of the ballot, 5 other sides, trails behind. So far 18 traders have staked $25,022. That's the crowd's conviction, not a headcount, and the market opened less than a day ago, so this verdict is still warm from the fryer. Still, you don't pay to back an opinion unless you mean it, and right now the money says chicken.

Here's my opinion, from a woman who has fried more chicken than most of you have scrolled past. I'm not one bit surprised. The biggest chain is like the biggest supermarket: always open, always the same, and nobody ever writes it a love letter. Being dependable gets you second place, but people only fall for food that makes them sit up. The Jollibee study and that Jersey Mike's boast teach the same lesson. Being big doesn't win hearts. Care does, whether it's in the batter or across the counter. If the mighty arches want their crown back, they might try being a bit less of a habit and a bit more of a treat.

What to watch next: whether McDonald's fans wake up, have their coffee and close the gap, and whether any of the five chains further down the ballot can make some noise before the oil cools. It's early, and early leads have gone soggy before. If you've got a strong opinion about your nuggets, come and back it on the market on Morfi. Just wipe your fingers first, dear.