And then there are the fast-casual chains - Panera Bread, Noodles & Company - that dress up the dish with nicer cheeses and real dine-in silverware, striving for a bougier image even while serving the comfort food of our childhoods.
Others, like Boston Market, lean into Thanksgiving or family meal traditions by offering mac and cheese with mashed potatoes, rotisserie chicken, sweet corn, and cornbread. Some of those chains, like KFC and Popeyes, are oriented around southern-style fried chicken, so giving another nod to soul food with a side of mac and cheese makes sense for brand identity. Whether that’s purely a product of nostalgia for Kraft stove-top varieties, or because highly processed foods are engineered to be more addictive, it feels like a missed opportunity that more chains aren’t, like Chick-fil-A as of today, serving mac and cheese alongside their fries and nuggets.īut even before Chick-fil-A jumped on the cheese-slathered macaroni train, a few enterprising fast-food and fast-casual brands had already pioneered the art of the quick-serve mac (for many chains, the secret is that it’s probably pre-made, either kept frozen or stored in warm batches). Macaroni and cheese, a generally perfect combination, is one of those rare foods whose processed versions, orange cheese and all, often just taste better than its artisanal iterations.
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