Berlin Chicken Shop Feud Has Produced 14 Lawsuits and One Torture Conviction. So Far

Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.

BERLIN — For years, everyone on Sonnenallee has wondered why there are two nearly identical rotisserie chicken shops one block apart, both called City Chicken, both serving half a chicken with hummus, garlic sauce, and coleslaw, prepared from the same Arabic recipe. The answer, according to a ZEIT investigation published this weekend, involves a ruined friendship, 14 lawsuits, and one owner in prison for an eight-hour hammer attack that exists in its entirety on video.

The shops have spent decades litigating which of them is real. One operates as “City Chicken das Original seit 1996” at Sonnenallee 59. The other counters with “City Chicken Nhas 1993” at Sonnenallee 73. ZEIT compared the rivals to the Albrecht brothers, who split Aldi into Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd over a disagreement over selling cigarettes. The Albrechts settled their dispute by dividing Germany in half and never speaking again, which until this weekend stood as the primary benchmark for conflict resolution in German food retail.

The feud outgrew trademark law on May 25, 2021, when one of the men contesting the City Chicken throne, Ramtin A., ran into a former business partner by chance on Auguststraße in Mitte. Prosecutors say he greeted the man by beating him severely on the sidewalk, loading him into his car, and driving him to an office in Neukölln. Inside, Ramtin asked a witness to switch off the office’s video surveillance. The witness did not. The cameras recorded all eight hours that followed: two hours of shouted accusations of theft and fraud, then several more conducted with hands, fists, and eventually a hammer, which the indictment says landed 46 times. Ramtin also photographed his victim’s injuries to show to other business partners, pioneering a new form of B2B marketing that German commercial law failed to anticipate.

The victim, then in his mid-twenties, was released after eight hours and has lived abroad at an undisclosed location ever since. Nobody reported any of this until April 2023, when the man who had brokered the office space went to the police. Ramtin was charged with hostage-taking and grievous bodily harm, and the Landgericht Berlin received the rare case file in which the entire crime is available in 1080p.

Both City Chickens remain open. Both still serve half a chicken with hummus, garlic sauce, and coleslaw. One of them gives free meals to any police officer or firefighter who walks in, a gesture the owner calls “an outstretched hand of our community” and which now doubles as the cheapest security arrangement on Sonnenallee. The chicken, by all accounts, is excellent.