At midnight on 1 October – less than two weeks after 250,000 people queued for up to 24 hours to say farewell to Queen Elizabeth II – a gaggle of Nottingham residents started a queue of their own: outside a former Burger King in the city centre.
Gradually, over the course of the next 11 hours, more and more people joined. Some arrived at 5am, others around 7am; many were wrapped in padded jackets and beanies as they waited to get inside an orange store with “Y’all ready for this?” above the door. This was the launch of Nottingham’s first Popeyes, a fried chicken restaurant founded in New Orleans in 1972.
