SACRAMENTO, CA -- A favorite main course meal is becoming more convenient to serve and eat, reports the Sacramento Bee.

According to the newspaper, many consumers are bypassing frozen meals or other main course dished that require preparation in favor of what's inside rotisserie chicken kiosks: "hot, juicy chickens, some already boxed and ready to take home."

Rotisserie chickens could be one of the "best timesaving food trends to come along in the past 10 years," notes the newspaper. Backing up this claim, Taste magazine recently conducted an informal survey in which 32 percent of respondents considered rotisserie chicken as "their favorite time-saving grocery purchase."

"We estimate that Americans ate about 750 million rotisserie chickens in 2005," Bill Roenigk, vice president of the National Chicken Council, told the newspaper, adding, "We asked consumers how often they buy rotisserie chickens, and most of them said about every other week."

Furthermore, because the popularity of rotisserie chickens has grown over the years, Roenigk predicts that it won't be long before they will hit convenience stores. 

"Fill up the car and grab a chicken on your way home," Roenigk said, adding that in the beginning, consumers bought rotisserie chickens to take home and serve as purchased. Now, consumers are using the chickens in recipes that call for cooked chicken, which "saves a lot of prep and cleanup time."

Roenigk told the newspaper that rotisserie chickens were popular in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. "Then in the '80s," he says, "Boston Market restaurants, which were originally called Boston Chicken, hit upon the idea of the rotisserie chicken. Soon, warehouse stores like Costco and Sam's Club began looking for a product they could offer shoppers as a hot, food-to-go item. So they tried rotisserie ovens where shoppers could see chickens cooking. Now it's rare to find a market chain that doesn't have a rotisserie program."

To encourage more market growth for rotisserie chicken, notes Roenigk, the industry should focus on making the product more appealing to ethnic consumers.

"For example, you might begin to see tropical flavors such as citrus marinade and adobo rub," notes Roenigk, "as opposed to home-style or honey-roasted. Or you might find chickens flavored with Italian spices."