Yes, another franchised global chain selling highly commoditised fast food, replete with its bold red branding and familiar logo, highly reminiscent of my review of McDonalds.  So since I obviously don’t like mass-produced high-volume over-marketed fast foods , why yet another review?  My son fancied KFC and would not stop talking about it, so KFC drive-thru it was, and a review inevitably to follow.

This is another company with a history mythologised to preserve any romance, so in case you fancy reading the carefully edited story of “Colonel” Harland Sanders, here it is.  But the real corporate stuff comes in Wikipedia:

By 1963 there were 600 KFC restaurants, making the company the largest fast food operation in the United States. KFC popularized chicken in the fast food industry, diversifying the market by challenging the established dominance of the hamburger.

In 1964, Sanders sold the company to a group of investors led by John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack C. Massey for US$2 million (around US$15 million in 2013). The contract included a lifetime salary for Sanders and the agreement that he would be the company’s quality controller and trademark. The chain had reached 3,000 outlets in 48 different countries by 1970. In July 1971, Brown sold the company to the Connecticut-based Heublein, a packaged food and drinks corporation, for US$285 million (around US$1.6 billion in 2013). Sanders died in 1980, his promotional work making him a prominent figure in American cultural history. By the time of his death, there were an estimated 6,000 KFC outlets in 48 different countries worldwide, with $2 billion of sales annually.

In 1982, Heublein was acquired by R. J. Reynolds, the tobacco giant. In July 1986, Reynolds sold KFC to PepsiCo for $850 million (around US$1.8 billion in 2013). PepsiCo made the chain a part of its restaurants division alongside Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. The Chinese market was entered in November 1987, with an outlet in Beijing.

In 1991, the KFC name was officially adopted, although it was already widely known by that initialism. Kyle Craig, president of KFC US, admitted the change was an attempt to distance the chain from the unhealthy connotations of “fried”. The early 1990s saw a number of successful major products launched throughout the chain, including spicy “Hot Wings” (launched in 1990), popcorn chicken (1992), and internationally, the “Zinger”, a spicy chicken fillet burger (1993). By 1994, KFC had 5,149 outlets in the US, and 9,407 overall, with over 100,000 employees. In August 1997, PepsiCo spun off its restaurants division as a public company valued at US$4.5 billion (around US$6.5 billion in 2013). The new company was named Tricon Global Restaurants, and at the time had 30,000 outlets and annual sales of US$10 billion (around US$14 billion in 2013), making it second in the world only to McDonald’s. Tricon was renamed Yum! Brands in May 2002.

So then, a corporate football, a profit machine and a franchise network the world over flogging any meal you like, so long as it’s based on chicken.  Yes, KFC is an exponent of variants of the traditional American delicacy, Southern Fried Chicken, which, unlike less user-friendly southern delicacies (grits, chitterlings, collard greens, neck bones, cornbread and suchlike) made for an easy market almost everywhere.

The thing is that chicken is almost a lowest common denominator, everyone who is not a veggie eats it, and it’s proven easy to commoditise, farm in mass production volumes, nail down costs to the tiniest fraction of a penny and provide fulfilment outlets everywhere.  All well and good, but KFC has had several obstacles to overcome in its battle for market dominance alongside the burger giants:

1. It’s easy to do, so everyone does it – lots of competition.
2. In the past 30 years or so we’ve come to realise just how unhealthy deep fried food can be and therefore to choose lower fat options
3. Concern over animal welfare standards means many people were turned off mass-produced chicken

No 1 was easy to the brand marketing boys, of whom these chains have many.  They set up the USPs in the form of distinctive marketing, convenient locations and nice promotions that appealed to all the family, while essentially serving exactly the same formula and process as fast food giants everywhere – and in this case the mystique added was their “secret blend of 11 herbs and spices” which in practice is almost certainly stuff you use every day and therefore not especially a secret worth knowing.  Their strap lines changed over time – “finger-lickin’ good” morphed into “so good ™”, but essentially the message was the same: ‘this is your favourite, so why try any other?  You know you can depend on us to serve you exactly the same meal you had last time.’

Maybe the attraction is not the food but that Joe Public wants to be associated with the brand and doesn’t care who knows it, which would if true for the mainstream, be a very sad indictment of shallow modern values.  Brands are to me nothing, they are worthless.  The product is all that counts, and if the product is awful then you shouldn’t buy it.  Brand loyalty is fine if it’s the product justifies it, otherwise it is a millstone around the neck of society.

Like McDonalds, KFC had its share of bad press to deal with along the way, not least the chicken brains that appeared in one diner’s dinner in Colchester (just up the road from me) and thereafter in many a newspaper article (no, I don’t believe for one second that it was kidney, that was a corporate whopper – no pun intended.)  Frankly, their denial that it was brain matter was an insult to the intelligence of the general public, but it didn’t stop the growth of punters or profits.  Clearly the power of marketing and commoditisation of our food has a major hold on the public.

The company has however taken the health and animal welfare messages seriously, with tweaks to the menu to cut the calorie content and offer salads without a stack of grease.  In fact, tastes have changed over time such that a significant proportion of the population can’t abide eating meat or fish off the bone, where in the culture of times past that was part of the attraction.  So nowadays we have a wide range of burgers (ie. the same soft, sweet buns adopted by burger chains) and boneless breast strips sitting alongside the traditional buckets of mixed chicken pieces (drumsticks, thighs, breast and wing) served on the bone.  We also now have the “Zinger” range, incorporating our new favourite ingredient, namely chilli.  There is the inevitable range of soft fizzy drinks, supplemented by juices, water, halfway decent coffee and a range of other family-friendly alternatives to the pots of liquid sugar and caffeine that send your kids hyper.

As for the chicken welfare, a whole menu on the company’s website is dedicated to myth busting and demonstrating their use of British farm standards and the highest levels of welfare and care, such that all their chickens live happy lives.  I’d suggest many serious experts in the field could ask rather more searching questions than those printed on the website, but from my perspective you will never get the highest quality of flavour in a mass-produced environment.  But for those who want to know, here is the reality according to KFC:

do you breed chickens with no heads

No! All our suppliers’ chickens have head, beaks, feathers, feet, and guaranteed welfare and quality standards which are the same all over the world.

I had watched a video of chickens being treated really badly and it looked really cruel, I hope that isn’t the case

It’s not. All our suppliers’ farms are carefully supervised and audited to make sure they meet acceptable standards of animal welfare. The chickens are kept free from hunger, disease and pain, and are humanely stunned before slaughter, which is continuously supervised by vets. We work with independent industry experts to develop our welfare programmes.

Is ur food made out of real authentic chickens? Because I have heard that some of the food ur make is from man made organisms, is this true?

Sounds creepy. We’re happy to confirm that, no, all our chicken is 100% real, authentic Grade-A chicken – the same as the chicken you buy in the supermarket and cook at home. Only slightly more delicious.