The heartwarming reason why a man slept in his car overnight outside the new Popeyes

At 9am on Thursday morning, a man in his car rolled up to the new Popeyes takeaway on Bury New Road in Salford to ask staff when they were set to open.

Diligently working to get things ready for the grand launch the next day, staff told him the doors would be opening at 11am on Friday morning (April 26). Having initially left, he came back after work at 6pm with a duvet, pillows and bedding in the back of his car, alongside a laptop to work from.

The man, who asked not to be named, was the first in line for the fast food chain’s first ever drive-thru in Greater Manchester and, as a result, he gets free chicken sandwiches for the next year.

READ MORE: 'If you snooze, you lose': Madness as people queue up for 17 hours at Popeyes first drive-thru in Greater Manchester

“I knew I was going to win this,” the man told the M.E.N after being parked up for 17 hours. “I’m not here to play games. They told me I’ve broken a record for the longest wait. I’ve actually had a full eight hour’s sleep, I’ve got heated seats in my car, I’ve been working from here and I’m just living the dream really.”

But the man, originally from Kenya, says he does not intend to eat the free food all by himself - he has bigger plans in the works. Asked why he chose to wait so long to be one of the first three customers in line for the year’s supply, he said: “It’s not just because it’s free food but, apart from eating Popeyes here and there, I can help feed some of the local homeless with it.

“Genuinely, if I don’t want to have the food, I can just stack the free sandwiches up over a month and give them out to the homeless across the city. As a citizen of Manchester, and a citizen of the UK, I feel like I need to help people out when I can. Why not,