Buffalonians have long been living without a Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, but that all changed this week when the chain opened the city’s very first location. And it sounds like the arrival of fast food chicken is causing everyone to lose their collective umm, minds, to put it delicately. The drive-thru was backed up for hours, with waiting drivers spilling into normal traffic. Tensions in line were running high, and things seemed grim.

“Just didn’t expect it to be three hours and there was a point where I couldn’t turn around,” one Buffalo resident told Time Warner Cable News (What? TWC News? Weird) of his drive-thru wait for dinner. “They were just swearing and yelling and then everyone started beeping the horns and the cops came and took care of it.”

Another prospective Popeyes diner decided there was no going back either, and decided to stick it out after stopping by just out of curiosity. By then, things were shifting from bad to worse when someone apparently tried to cut in the drive-thru line.

“It just escalated,” she says. “I saw this big dude come from the back of the car and try to wrestle the girl, then the whole family came out, tried to, you know, jump her and cars walked by, passed by. It just got hectic.”

But hold your tongue if you’re just calling this another fast food place, a place perhaps undeserving of such high drama. It’s special, say its devotees.

“Wouldn’t classify Popeyes as fast food. It’s something else. It’s like a culture, a way of life, a cuisine I guess,” another resident claimed.

The owner says he wasn’t prepared for the big traffic back-up in the drive-thru line on Tuesday night, but the staff is going to forge bravely ahead.

“We keep up. We’ve got enough food already for tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, so the truck is coming to bring the food,” he said.

Popeye’s opens to long lines [Time Warner Cable News]

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