By Jordan-Ashley Walker
What grade did Ϲ senior Leah Hallwirth earn on her marketing class project?
A “six-seven.”
No, not a score out of 100, but a nod to the recent internet phenomenon that had kids everywhere saying, “six-seven,” nonstop, much to the confusion and chagrin of the adults in their lives.
Now, that class project by Leah, a Chesapeake native and strategic communication major, has made its way to grocery store freezer sections nationwide. Inspired by the viral “six-seven” trend, her idea evolved into Perdue’s Six Seven Chicken Nuggets, now available in 3,000 stores.
The frozen nuggets in the shape of the numbers six and seven highlight the collaboration between Ϲ’s Strome College of Business and Perdue AgriBusiness. The partnership provides students with real-world, experiential learning opportunities, while also helping companies solve problems and drive innovation.
In October 2025, Professor Ken Kahn, Ph.D., invited Rick Lloyd, vice president of Stakeholder Partnerships at Perdue AgriBusiness, to the New Product Planning and Commercialization class.
“By leveraging relationships with our corporate partners, our Strome students get hands-on experience finding solutions to everyday business challenges,” Dr. Kahn said. “The result is career-ready graduates who are poised to make a difference.”
Lloyd showed Dr. Kahn’s marketing students Perdue’s current chicken nugget offerings — dinosaurs, sea creatures, moons and stars — and challenged the class to come up with the next big nugget shape, as well as the marketing plan to support the theoretical product launch.
Leah, the daughter of a teacher, immediately thought about chicken nuggets in the shape of numbers, with the addition of plus and minus signs to make mealtime interactive.
And what better way to market the number-shaped nuggets, she thought, than through the viral “six-seven” trend? At the time, the trend, which Merriam-Webster calls a nonsensical expression used mostly as an interjection, already had billions of impressions on social media.
Leah even did her own informal market research, calling on her mom’s students to provide feedback on her proposed product concept and marketing strategy.
Several weeks later, Leah and her classmates presented their ideas and marketing strategies to Lloyd. Leah’s number-shaped nuggets combined with the viral “six-seven” trend immediately piqued Lloyd’s interest.
“I loved Leah’s idea, from inception to the market research she did with her mom’s elementary school class,” Lloyd said. “Even though we already had other nugget shapes in the works, I knew we had to try and bring these to life. Our product team really ran with it and took the marketing to the next level to reach kids and their parents.”
The result was Perdue’s fastest product launch to-date, with the company knowing they had to move quickly, or they’d miss the chance to capitalize on a chicken nugget version of the trend that had everyone talking.
And that’s what brought Leah to the Strome Entrepreneurial Center last week, when she opened a portable cooler packed with eight bags of the Six Seven Chicken Nuggets, a variation of the product she had proposed as a marketing class project six months prior.
“When I was pitching the idea to market number chicken nuggets with a “six-seven” TikTok, I never imagined that it would be taken seriously and even go as far as becoming actual Six Seven Chicken Nuggets,” Leah said. “I have really enjoyed getting to meet different people from Perdue, especially with how Rick Lloyd came into class just to see our presentations and introduce us to the company. That element made me feel really engaged in this project as a whole.”
Lloyd, together with Chris Perdue, senior vice president of Marketing, Digital and E-Commerce at Perdue, surprised Leah with the news that her nuggets were not only going to be produced, but were already in stores. In addition to seeing her concept ready for dinner tables nationwide, Leah was presented with a check from Perdue for $5,000 to acknowledge her contribution.
“This is one of those phrases that parents haven’t been able to escape — from carpools and classrooms to the dinner table,” Chris Perdue said. “We figured if it was going to show up at mealtime anyway, it might as well be on the plate.”
Perdue’s Six Seven Chicken Nuggets are being sold exclusively at 3,000 Walmart stores by May 1, with a suggested retail price of $7.24.