News

Federal Donuts Poses Philosophical Dilemma, Hints at New Product

A cryptic post on the fried chicken and donut chainlet's Instagram account offers a clue.


federal donuts south street

Federal Donuts | Photo by Michael Persico

Federal Donuts’ Instagram account is pretty much reserved for sexy closeups of their fancies drizzled with colorful icing or studded with seasonal sprinkles. But this morning, a cryptic non-food pic posted to the account has us scratching our heads.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Federal Donuts (@federaldonuts) on

Let’s break it down.

Clearly, “‘wich” is an abbreviation of “sandwich,” the popular practice of putting foods in between layers of another food — typically bread, buns, rolls, and bagels, but sometimes donuts, and also sometimes chicken.

The mysterious phrase is a play on the philosophical question “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” — an infinitely recursive paradox originally posed by Aristotle and phrased in this enduring form by Plutarch around 2,000 years ago. From this, we can deduce that the famed fried food chainlet is either encouraging us to contemplate for ourselves an ancient paradox that’s been considered by humanity’s foremost thinkers over millennia, or they might be hinting about rolling out a new breakfast sandwich.

Finally, it’s clear that the savvy branding folks behind FedNuts would never choose a font for at random. The black block letters look as though they were scrawled with considerable effort, almost as though the writer lacks a firm grasp on written English. In fact, it reminds us of an ad campaign for a much larger chain that’s already got both chicken and eggs on its morning menu.

Luckily, we won’t have to spend eternity pondering the question, because a CookNSolo rep told us we’d have more details to share on Monday.