WASHINGTON – A tweet praising the fried chicken sandwiches at Roaming Rooster in the District of Columbia went viral — and now, to repay the tweeter, the restaurant's owners have granted her free chicken for life.
The tweet from Bri Hall, a 24-year-old musician raised in Maryland, whose stage name is "La Hara," drove demand for the restaurant's sandwiches, generating lines that still stretch out the door at all hours of the day.
Hall posted during the height of America's obsession with the Popeyes chicken sandwich to suggest that Washington, D.C., locals try Roaming Rooster, a family business owned by an Ethiopian immigrant who, she wrote, "has always been kind."
"After her tweet, our business went up," said Michael Habtemariam, one of the restaurant's owners. "Now she never has to pay again."
That also holds true for Hall's boyfriend, Kristopher Head, a photographer and videographer, Habtemariam said. Habtemariam — who owns the restaurant along with his brother Biniyam Habtemariam and Biniyam's wife, Hareg Mesfin — has never before granted anyone free chicken in the roughly four years since Roaming Rooster launched, he said.
Head was the one who introduced Hall to the restaurant about a year ago, Hall wrote in an e-mail to the Washington Post, sent before she learned she was receiving free chicken.
"He came home raving about their food, bringing some for me to try and it was the best chicken sandwich I've ever had," Hall wrote. "From there on, a bond was forged between our families and we became regular customers."
She felt the urge to tweet about Roaming Rooster when she was "scrolling through Twitter" and noticed a large number of posts about Popeyes, which she has never particularly liked. Hall always thought that Popeyes lacked the "it factor" you see at home or when exploring other cultures' cuisines, she wrote.
