7 Fast-Food Chains That Serve the Best Family-Style Dinners
When the week becomes busy, getting dinner on the table is the last thing you'll want to worry about. While there's nothing like a home-cooked meal, sometimes there just isn't enough time to prepare one.
If you find yourself needing to throw a quick meal together, many fast-food chains offer family-style dinners designed to please a crowd, typically at a lower price than takeout from a traditional restaurant. Plus, it's called "fast" food for a reason.
Since feeding a group can be challenging with multiple food preferences to consider, we compiled a list of different fast-food and fast-casual chains that serve family meals you can easily grab on the go. Here are seven chains that carry some of the best family-friendly options. As always, prices can vary depending on the location.
Panera
At this fast-casual bakery-cafe chain, the options are plentiful whether you're ordering for just yourself or your entire household. If you're opting for the latter, Panera offers a collection of Family Feast Value Meals featuring different combinations of sandwiches, salads, soups, and pizzas. Some even come with desserts.
Take the Family Feast with Cookies, for example. This $39 meal, which serves four to six people, is complete with four half sandwiches, one whole salad, one quart of soup, one whole French baguette, and four of Panera's Chocolate Chipper Cookies. If you only want to order certain items in larger servings, the chain also sells group-sized portions of soup, mac and cheese, and bakery items.
KFC
In the mood for some comfort food? What's a more quintessential choice than fried chicken? KFC sells family meals of different sizes starring its signature fried chicken or tenders, along with biscuits and a choice of sides.
For instance, the 12-piece chicken meal comes with a choice of the chain's Variety Bucket or all-dark meat Drum & Thigh Bucket, as well as six biscuits and three large sides. Meanwhile, the 12-piece tenders meal includes tenders, six dipping sauces, six biscuits, and three large sides. Prices range from about $36 to $42, depending on your location.
Examples of side dishes include KFC's Secret Recipe Fries, mac and cheese, and mashed potatoes. However, if you already have some dishes prepared at home, the fast-food chain also sells eight, 12, and 16-count buckets of fried chicken and boxes of tenders that can be ordered by themselves.
Bojangles
Speaking of fried chicken, this regional fast-food chain, primarily found in the Southeastern U.S., also serves up family meals centered around the beloved crispy bird. In addition to your choice of chicken, almost all of these meal options are paired with a combination of biscuits, a choice of fixin's—like seasoned fries, dirty rice, and macaroni and cheese—as well as Bojangles' iced tea.
To appease both the fried chicken and tender fans, there's the 12-Piece Chicken Supremes Meal, which gives customers four pieces of fried chicken, eight chicken tenders, four homemade biscuits, two fixin's, and one half-gallon of iced tea.
Popeyes
If Popeyes is your preferred chicken chain of choice, you can order a family-sized meal featuring the restaurant's iconic item. While tender and nugget options are available, if you'd prefer to stick with the classics, Popeyes offers 12- and 16-count chicken family meals that include the chain's signature chicken, a choice of large sides, and buttermilk biscuits. There's also the Family Feast option, which comes with two chicken sandwiches, a six-piece order of fried chicken, two large sides, and four biscuits for around $30 to $33.
Boston Market
Keeping the comfort food trend going, fast-casual restaurant chain Boston Market dishes out multiple family meals, several of which are designed to feed three to six people. With this deal, you will first choose between the chain's famous rotisserie chicken, roasted turkey, meatloaf, or barbecue ribs (where available). The size of the meal will correspond with the number of sides and pieces of cornbread per order. In other words, if you select the Rotisserie Chicken for three (which is around $30), you will receive three pieces of fresh baked cornbread and three side dishes of your choice.
Additionally, while some of the sides, like mashed potatoes and sweet corn, are included in the price of the meal, others are an extra dollar or two, such as creamed spinach and sweet potato casserole.
Domino's
For an easy pizza night, Domino's bundles up the essentials for $19.99. The chain's Perfect Combo deal comes with the following four "crowd-pleasers": two medium one-topping pizzas, 16 parmesan bites, eight cinnamon bread twists, and a two-liter bottle of Coke.
Domino's also has its Mix & Match deal, which gives customers a choice of any two items for $6.99. However, as the pizza chain notes on its website, bone-in wings, bread bowl pasta, and handmade pan pizza will cost more.
Panda Express
This Chinese-American fast-food chain enables complete customization when ordering a family meal. With this group-friendly option, customers get a choice of two sides, such as chow mein or fried rice, along with three entrées, available for as low as $35 in some locations. It's important to note that Panda Express' Black Pepper Angus Steak and Honey Walnut Shrimp are considered "premium entrées," which means they're available for a higher price.
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