Unlike many Harold’s Chicken Shacks, the one at 917 W. 87th St. doesn’t have a number, and it’s not listed on the corporate website. While it features alternative versions of the chain’s identifying axman chasing a chicken on its sign and awning, neither matches the version seen on some other Harold’s or the company’s website.
A Visit to a Family-Owned Harold’s Chicken Shack As the Legendary Chain Celebrates 75 Years
Kathleen Hinkel
April 7, 2025
Harold’s Chicken Shack was founded 75 years ago by a Black entrepreneur who came to Chicago from Alabama. Now it’s a legendary part of Chicago. Photo: Kathleen Hinkel for WTTW
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Harold’s Chicken Shack is legendary. The Black-owned fried chicken chain started 75 years ago on Chicago’s South Side is name-dropped in lyrics by Chicago rappers-gone-big from Common to Juice WRLD to Noname. People argue over which location is the best, even setting out to try every one and rank them objectively. It has its own markers and customs: an ax-wielding figure chasing a chicken for a logo, a turnstile through bulletproof glass to deliver your food, specific lingo for orders, and vinegary mild sauce that ends up dousing the bread and fries that come with the chicken.
As with all good legends, it can be difficult to discern solid facts about Harold’s from the hazily remembered lore that has accumulated over the decades. The first shack was opened by Harold Pierce, who had come to Chicago from Alabama in 1943 as part of the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South. He and his wife Hilda ran a restaurant called H&H that specialized in chicken feet and dumplings, the kind of food he might have grown up eating in the South. (Many Harold's still serve liver, gizzards, and giblets.) Supplied by a friend and poultry shop owner named Gene Rosen, Pierce decided to try his hand at fried chicken and opened a take-out joint called Harold’s Chicken Shack in Kenwood in 1950.
Pierce’s daughter and current Harold’s CEO Kristen Pierce-Sherrod told the Chicago Tribune in 2019 that some people place the first Harold’s “at 43rd and Greenwood, but it was Kimbark.” But Kimbark Avenue doesn’t intersect 43rd Street, and other press accounts over the years have located the original at 47th Street and Kenwood Avenue or 47th Street and Greenwood Avenue. (We could not reach Pierce-Sherrod for an interview.) All that’s to say: take any information about Harold’s with a grain of salt – or lemon pepper, the popular proprietary seasoning available to flavor orders at many Harold’s, including the one located at 917 W. 87th St. in Auburn Gresham.
That’s the location that photographer Kathleen Hinkel visited for a day in March to document the chain in its 75th anniversary year.
But it has the signature faux red brick and painted white arches of older Harold’s, and is a longstanding location with a connection to Harold Pierce himself. It was opened by an Arkansan named Laverne Burnett – also known as Mr. Lee, Chicken Lee, or Chicken King – who met the “Fried Chicken King” Pierce while shining shoes in Chicago, according to Burnett’s descendants. Both Burnett and Pierce were known to drive around in a car topped by a giant chicken head.
Burnett got into the chicken business and eventually operated ten to 14 Harold’s around Chicago, according to varying reports – the most of any other operator with the chain, Pierce-Sherrod told the Chicago Sun-Times for Burnett’s obituary. (Burnett died in 2018.)
Burnett’s son Tony Bailey took over the 87th St. location. When he died suddenly in 2023, his daughter Toneia Bailey found herself the owner and operator. She was only 20 at the time.
She had plenty of experience and support to draw upon, however. Deneen Shenaurlt has worked at the location for decades and has helped show the ropes to Toneia, the third generation of the family under whom Shenaurlt has worked.
Toneia’s uncles John and Eric Bailey are also helping to mentor their niece. “My brother showed me the ins and outs of the business,” says Eric, Tony’s younger brother.
The kitchen has the feel of a family party, with family members working alongside employees who have been there and known the family for decades: like Shenaurlt, James “Twin” Stevens has worked for all three generations.
Jokes fly and music plays as the friendly staff fulfill orders throughout the day. Anthony Hampton is part of the newer, younger generation, but even he has known Toneia for years, calling her his closest, oldest friend.
Shenaurlt has her own catering business outside of Harold’s, and tries to pass on wisdom to the younger staffers. “I like to feed people,” she says. “You feed people with love.”
Part of the Harold’s mythos is an expectation of rude service – “Sometimes I think the bulletproof glass is to protect the patrons from the not-so-friendly cashiers rather than the other way around,” one enthusiast joked in Chicago magazine – but the location on 87th St. is an exception, according to Eve Green, who’s been going there for decades. Asked what keeps her coming back, she answers, “The freshness, the fries, the sauce, the flavor, the service, the politeness, the everything."
Almost an entire chicken is available to order from Harold’s: wings; combos of a half or whole chicken, just dark meat, or just white meat; tenders; and even gizzards, liver, and giblets. But fried cod and perch are also popular, and you can also get that staple of Chicago hot dog stands and convenience stores, the pizza puff.
Unusually for a chain, the food is typically fried only after it’s ordered, and prepared mostly in-house – it’s why another common but fundamental aspect of the Harold’s experience is a long wait. At the 87th St. location, the chicken and fish are seasoned and dredged in flour at the restaurant.
You can get your order further seasoned with lemon pepper, which Toneia calls “the most famous thing in the world.”
But the truly iconic flavoring at Harold’s is mild sauce, a tangy condiment specific to the South Side that’s a mixture of hot sauce, ketchup, and barbecue sauce. (You can also get your chicken “hot,” or spicier.) The origins of mild sauce are unconfirmed, but the owners of Harold’s rival Uncle Remus claim to have invented it, while some people speculate it was made for customers who didn’t want their food too spicy.
The sauce varies from location to location – the lack of a uniform experience is another way in which Harold’s is unlike most chains. Pierce was relatively loose and hands-off in his franchising of the brand, which helps explain the confusing numbering system. Every Chicago location listed on the corporate website (which is out of date) has a number, while locations in other states don’t, necessarily. There’s no longer a #1, but the numbers range from 2 to 100, with some duplicates. The inscrutability almost makes you wonder if there’s a secret pattern hiding in the numbers.
According to Pierce’s obituary in the Tribune, he opened a second Harold’s location in Woodlawn in 1964, around the time that Chicago area suburbanite Ray Kroc was turning McDonald’s into a national brand. Unlike Kroc and the owners of other growing chain restaurants, Pierce focused on Black neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side as he expanded – both as a way to fill a void in Black communities and because of obstacles such as racism and redlining that prevented Black businesses from expanding into other areas. “They’d kick my ass out” if he tried to open in a white neighborhood, he is reported to have told the Chicago Reader in 1975. (There are now Harold's in neighborhoods such as Wicker Park.)
By 1975, there were 20 Harold’s locations around the city. When Pierce died in 1988, there were 30 to 40 locations. His second wife, Willa, then expanded into the suburbs. Pierce’s children have since pushed Harold’s into other states as far afield as California, Texas, and Georgia. Seventy-five years in, that makes it one of the older and larger Black-owned food franchises in the country.
