3 of the worst corporate decisions they made ever:
1. Getting rid of the BBQ pulled chicken sandwich - Long ago they had it and it was inexpensive to make and quite good. Many people to this day complain about no longer being able to find it anywhere.
2. Phasing out their grilled chicken - It was quite good, and people who wanted a healthier option than fried chicken, like me, simply don't go anymore because it's disappearing.
3. Merging with Taco Bell - The menu is far too big now, and Taco Bell items are lower in quality and cheaper. I think it's the final move to phase KFC out.
When are people going to realize that telling customers what they want, reducing value and quality, and ignoring their complaints is not a good business model?
> When are people going to realize that telling customers what they want, reducing value and quality, and ignoring their complaints is not a good business model?
Just as soon as they realize that short-term immediate profit is not the only goal that any business could ever possibly have.
Pretty much the day after never, or right after the collapse of capitalist society. Whichever comes first.
Huh interesting. I always thought he was a military retired Colonel and as such already pretty rich before he started the franchise. I had no idea it was also a Honorary title in America.
US military used to be largely made up of state militias (dating back to colonial days), run by the governor, with the federal government sometimes funding, equipping, and mobilizing those militias in times of war. Commissions in state militias were sometimes used by governors as a reward or gift to their political supporters. In particular, "colonel" was a rank often bestowed on wealthy benefactors without any expectation of actual military duty.
The militias were largely nationalized in the early 1900s, creating what's now called the National Guard. Governors still have limited power to deploy their state Guard but they're mostly under federal control. But some states retained the tradition of honorary colonels, and Kentucky is probably the most famous.
(There are a lot of other kind of goofy honorary state militia titles in the US -- Admiral of the Texas Navy, etc. Some of them don't require much more than paying a fee.)
My takeaway is that Sanders cared about serving quality fast food, and KFC corporate cared about reducing costs and doing brand necromancy. The upshot is you won't get KFC chicken at KFC, just a pale, cheap imitation of the original, meanwhile the original recipe is still kicking about out there in other chicken takeaways (assuming they cook the chicken properly!)
> My takeaway is that Sanders cared about serving quality fast food, and KFC corporate cared about reducing costs and doing brand necromancy. The upshot is you won't get KFC chicken at KFC, just a pale, cheap imitation of the original
Assuming that's the case, the anecdote in the article of him walking into the kitchen in a random KFC and berating the people for making the chicken the was they did seems a bit unfair; it's not like the random people working there had any choice in the corporate policies or autonomy to choose to make the chicken in a different way. I get that he was frustrated and that this wasn't the only way he tried to fight the changes, but it shouldn't be that hard to have a little empathy for the presumably minimum wage workers who are just there to earn a paycheck.
Went there with a reporter from the NY Times, and put on a show in the kitchen. One hopes he didn't make a habit of "walking into the kitchen in a random KFC and berating the people", but this specific incident was not that at all.
> it's not like the random people working there had any choice in the corporate policies or autonomy to choose to make the chicken in a different way.
I'm torn on this one, and can see both sides. For any kind of mega-business, not just restaurant chains: If your goal is to correct corporate behavior, protest or "make things difficult for corporate" then there really aren't any good options. You could annoy the individual stores and/or frontline staff, but as you say they are usually powerless minimum-wage drones who can't change things, and even might probably be sympathetic to your cause. On the other hand, if enough people make the businesses unpleasant or do things at those business that end up costing corporate, there is a slim chance that corporate might make changes.
A big problem with mega-business style capitalism is that key stakeholders like employees and the general public are powerless. You can only change a business's behavior if you're either 1. shareholders or 2. customers via boycott or 3. regulators. Unfortunately, the non-customer general public cannot vote a corporation out, nor can they walk into their local WalMart and "complain to the owner of WalMart" like they can for smaller local businesses.
The first and second times I visited KFC in the US I was shocked there were no vegetables in their sandwiches. Other than the corn, and coleslaw, no lettuce or other ingredients in the sandwiches. In europe, and China and any other country I’ve seen KFC they have amazing Zinger sandwiches with lattice and sauces and grea flavor. We make it a point to never go to KFC in the US.
One thing I find utterly depressing is how literally every American fast food chain has infinitely better quality and taste in their overseas locations.
Evidently they save their absolute worst products for their home market.
In the US they aim to become a local monopoly through rock bottom prices, while abroad they are an upscale location with premium prices where people go to treat mostly their kids. McDonalds abroad I’ve seen had Hollywood theme or Elvis theme,
etc. It’s a piece of US culture with the same big macs but broader menu.
Other countries often have much stronger regulations about what is considered to be "food".
For example, McDonalds often has to use actual beef in their overseas hamburgers as opposed to the "beef sludge" that they use in the ones in the US. McDonalds in Italy served a hamburger like I remember from back when I was a child.
This is not universal, however. Hamburgers in the UK seem to be uniquely terrible, for example.
That's because the US is a profit farm for US corporations (& a tax farm for those making bank on US foreign policy) so they can subsidize the rest of the world. Food, medicine, you name it — bottom-of-the-barrel service & quality for the average person & below in the US at top-dollar prices, & the people in the middle & below classes think they're doing well because it's all they know.
US is way less densely populated than most countries[1]. That might add more pressure on stability over taste for industrialized fast foods in the US. By the way, I feel like American fresh meat is superb, if that makes up for it. It could be just that you can't have literal everything.
I live in the US and am constantly disappointed by the fact that I have to pay extra to add onions to my Taco Bell burrito or lettuce and tomato to a McDouble (typically when on a road trip with friends). As it turns out this might be attributable to companies optimizing for consumers' dollars instead of flavor preferences [1]:
> “They liked flavorful foods like turkey tetrazzini, but only at first; they quickly grew tired of them. On the other hand, mundane foods like white bread would never get them too excited, but they could eat lots and lots of it without feeling they’d had enough.”
> This contradiction is known as “sensory-specific satiety.” In lay terms, it is the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more.
It probably also has something to do with the fact that people often equate "vegetables" with unseasoned, boiled slop like spinach and broccoli instead of more delicious preparations like grilling, broiling, roasting, or sauteeing with a liberal amount of seasoning. Brussels sprouts, for instance, are incredible when broiled and tossed with olive oil (or, even better, bacon fat!) and carmelized onions but are nigh-inedible if scooped out of a stock pot full of hot tap water.
Broccoli is perfectly fine boiled. It's just that it takes literally 2 minutes to get brilliant green and slightly crunchy broccoli, while some home cooks put it on for 20 minutes. It's nice lightly salted with a bit of fresh lemon juice and sprinkled with sliced almonds.
I will admit that any vegetable probably tastes better if you add bacon but I'm not sure that's a slight against the cooking method itself.
Yeah, vegetable prices vary a lot seasonally and US fast food companies have decided steady profit margins are "better" than a varied menu with good vegetable options.
It's maybe the biggest shame for KFC itself to have fallen to the same rough cost minimizing as the rest of its industry: there was a time in the US where KFC was almost synonymous with a full meal of chicken (obviously), mashed potatoes (technically a vegetable, though with all that dairy and gravy not the healthiest one), and green beans. It's the green beans I miss the most from today's KFC.
Also, for many decades some KFC franchises did lunch buffets that were incredible vegetable buffets: lima beans, collard/mustard greens, green beans, and salads. (Plenty of non-vegetables, too, and pies and such to make up for any attempt at healthy eating.) I think COVID killed the US KFC Buffet for good, and many of the franchises that used to run them have even switched brands to something more "exciting". (Often KFCs are getting replaced by that pickle brine dipped chicken brand that even more doesn't bother with any vegetables that aren't pickles or potatoes, and is doing very good business in this country right now despite how bland their food is, in part due to strange political alignments.)
The sad thing is, whenever I would land back in the UK for a visit I would always go straight to a KFC and grab a British Zinger because they were so much better than anything sold at the American restaurants.
Understandable (as in: I could see myself acting like that if I had a company to sell), but also, you sold it, what did you expect? Did you believe some legally not enforceable promises because you wanted the money and were willing to lie to yourself?
There are many ways to loose control of your company without selling it upfront.
For example if you take money from an minority investor with the promise of an IPO (so they can make profit from their minority share).
After the company goes public, control is much more iffy. You may for example not have your place in the board anymore even though you are majority owner.
Yes. Some of it is just plain dillusion. My grandmother went through so much trouble and time finding someone she wanted to sell her business to because of "her clients" etc. She sold it and complained about everything the lady did to the business. She even financed the sale so she could sell to her, denying cash offers that came in much higher. The person she sold it to sold off half the business and clients almost immediately.
However he sold it; they apparently, to this day have rights to his likeness. I would hope that would give him some power to call them out if they are making a lesser product in his name, all the while passing it off as his 'original recipe'
I love how in the article they just let him go back and walk around the kitchen and bitch even though he had nothing to do with the company at that point. Who's going to say no when you walk into a KFC and you're Colonel fucking Sanders
The real Colonel sounds amazing. Every time you guys exit your company to private equity, or sell it to some huge conglomerate, realize this is what will happen to it.
> My God, that gravy is horrible. They buy tap water for 15 to 20 cents a thousand gallons and then mix it with flour and starch and end up with pure wallpaper paste. And I know wallpaper paste, by God, because I’ve seen my mother make it.
Sanders might sound A LOT like Gordon Ramsay in this article, but I doubt Gordon ever shot and killed a man over a turf war and beat up one of his legal clients. I think I remember hearing the Colonel beat down at least one of his bosses. He must have coated himself in restaurant-grade teflon as he seemed to get away with it.. Should have called it Gangster Fried Chicken.
Sanders never killed anyone either. He was involved in a shootout where the other guy shot and killed the gas station manager, Sanders' involvement was shooting said guy who lived and later went to jail as a result of killing the manager.
ahh my bad, all these years I was wrong- I see now that The Colonel rode up with two of his armed employees and got one of them killed and his competitor (Stewart) jailed who died by gunshot about 2 years later. Some say the cop that shot him was payed off with white buckets full of cash. Soon after the Colonel's gas station started selling white buckets full of addictive fried chicken infused with herb and spice and the Colonel married Stewart's daughter-in-law. Later, Stewarts daughter became the Colonel's right hand, and managed a big operation for him. She is quoted as calling the Colonel "a straight shooter". One big happy
family style story. Someone should make a movie
Sanders killed anyone. He was involved in a shootout at a gas station, and a gas station employee got shot by his shootout opponent and killed, which effectively won Sanders the turf war.
Fun fact: After selling out in the US, Colonel Sanders moved to Mississauga, Ontario, Canada to oversee the Canadian operations to ensure that the quality was of his liking.
When I grew up in the 80s in Canada, KFC was incredible, as were all of their items. At age 12, I scored a job working there too. During that time was when they announced their crispy chicken variant in Canada and "new taste" - but what we saw were new flour bags (we had to throw out the original flour bags), new oil in the cookers, new processes (no more soaking the chicken for 15 min before frying), and gravy that was made from a soup packet.
And while the chicken tasted the same, it was far more greasy and disgusting to handle compared to beforehand - and everyone noticed. I remember our manager telling us "Well I guess we now have to make it US style. But our prepared cost went from 11 cents per piece to 8 cents per piece after all bills are paid."
"Ingredients: Monosodium Glutamate, White and Black Pepper, Fine Flake Salt, Sage, Coriander, and other natural spices"
So if the first listed ingredient represents the most abundant ingredient...
Also, such a cop out that the FDA has allowed "other natural spices" to be a legit listing. Supposedly to protect corporate secrets blah blah. What if someone is allergic to one of those "natural spices". Either we're for accurate food labeling for the public's safety, or we're not. This in between state highly suggests we're not.
It's so weird to see this completely legitimate critique of food labelling standards is stitched on to a nothing-comment about seasoning containing MSG
The FDA maintains a list of known allergens and they must always be listed if used as ingredients, even if they are seasonings/spices. Besides, if I put on a hard hat for safety but not a hi-vis vest then it doesn't make wearing the hard hat any less for safety. False dichotomies about it don't help move safety forward.
Readit News
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Sanders_Dinner_House
1. Getting rid of the BBQ pulled chicken sandwich - Long ago they had it and it was inexpensive to make and quite good. Many people to this day complain about no longer being able to find it anywhere.
2. Phasing out their grilled chicken - It was quite good, and people who wanted a healthier option than fried chicken, like me, simply don't go anymore because it's disappearing.
3. Merging with Taco Bell - The menu is far too big now, and Taco Bell items are lower in quality and cheaper. I think it's the final move to phase KFC out.
When are people going to realize that telling customers what they want, reducing value and quality, and ignoring their complaints is not a good business model?
Just as soon as they realize that short-term immediate profit is not the only goal that any business could ever possibly have.
Pretty much the day after never, or right after the collapse of capitalist society. Whichever comes first.
Deleted Comment
The militias were largely nationalized in the early 1900s, creating what's now called the National Guard. Governors still have limited power to deploy their state Guard but they're mostly under federal control. But some states retained the tradition of honorary colonels, and Kentucky is probably the most famous.
(There are a lot of other kind of goofy honorary state militia titles in the US -- Admiral of the Texas Navy, etc. Some of them don't require much more than paying a fee.)
And a video on the history of Sanders' fight with KFC corporate, and what exactly is in the seasoning? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WJYOgzFydc
My takeaway is that Sanders cared about serving quality fast food, and KFC corporate cared about reducing costs and doing brand necromancy. The upshot is you won't get KFC chicken at KFC, just a pale, cheap imitation of the original, meanwhile the original recipe is still kicking about out there in other chicken takeaways (assuming they cook the chicken properly!)
Assuming that's the case, the anecdote in the article of him walking into the kitchen in a random KFC and berating the people for making the chicken the was they did seems a bit unfair; it's not like the random people working there had any choice in the corporate policies or autonomy to choose to make the chicken in a different way. I get that he was frustrated and that this wasn't the only way he tried to fight the changes, but it shouldn't be that hard to have a little empathy for the presumably minimum wage workers who are just there to earn a paycheck.
I'm torn on this one, and can see both sides. For any kind of mega-business, not just restaurant chains: If your goal is to correct corporate behavior, protest or "make things difficult for corporate" then there really aren't any good options. You could annoy the individual stores and/or frontline staff, but as you say they are usually powerless minimum-wage drones who can't change things, and even might probably be sympathetic to your cause. On the other hand, if enough people make the businesses unpleasant or do things at those business that end up costing corporate, there is a slim chance that corporate might make changes.
A big problem with mega-business style capitalism is that key stakeholders like employees and the general public are powerless. You can only change a business's behavior if you're either 1. shareholders or 2. customers via boycott or 3. regulators. Unfortunately, the non-customer general public cannot vote a corporation out, nor can they walk into their local WalMart and "complain to the owner of WalMart" like they can for smaller local businesses.
Evidently they save their absolute worst products for their home market.
For example, McDonalds often has to use actual beef in their overseas hamburgers as opposed to the "beef sludge" that they use in the ones in the US. McDonalds in Italy served a hamburger like I remember from back when I was a child.
This is not universal, however. Hamburgers in the UK seem to be uniquely terrible, for example.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
That said, they haven't spread far from their original locations.
I also remember going to five guys and there was something on the wall about the ingredients never frozen. Five guys is lots more expensive though.
Deleted Comment
> “They liked flavorful foods like turkey tetrazzini, but only at first; they quickly grew tired of them. On the other hand, mundane foods like white bread would never get them too excited, but they could eat lots and lots of it without feeling they’d had enough.”
> This contradiction is known as “sensory-specific satiety.” In lay terms, it is the tendency for big, distinct flavors to overwhelm the brain, which responds by depressing your desire to have more.
It probably also has something to do with the fact that people often equate "vegetables" with unseasoned, boiled slop like spinach and broccoli instead of more delicious preparations like grilling, broiling, roasting, or sauteeing with a liberal amount of seasoning. Brussels sprouts, for instance, are incredible when broiled and tossed with olive oil (or, even better, bacon fat!) and carmelized onions but are nigh-inedible if scooped out of a stock pot full of hot tap water.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinar...
I will admit that any vegetable probably tastes better if you add bacon but I'm not sure that's a slight against the cooking method itself.
It's maybe the biggest shame for KFC itself to have fallen to the same rough cost minimizing as the rest of its industry: there was a time in the US where KFC was almost synonymous with a full meal of chicken (obviously), mashed potatoes (technically a vegetable, though with all that dairy and gravy not the healthiest one), and green beans. It's the green beans I miss the most from today's KFC.
Also, for many decades some KFC franchises did lunch buffets that were incredible vegetable buffets: lima beans, collard/mustard greens, green beans, and salads. (Plenty of non-vegetables, too, and pies and such to make up for any attempt at healthy eating.) I think COVID killed the US KFC Buffet for good, and many of the franchises that used to run them have even switched brands to something more "exciting". (Often KFCs are getting replaced by that pickle brine dipped chicken brand that even more doesn't bother with any vegetables that aren't pickles or potatoes, and is doing very good business in this country right now despite how bland their food is, in part due to strange political alignments.)
For example if you take money from an minority investor with the promise of an IPO (so they can make profit from their minority share).
After the company goes public, control is much more iffy. You may for example not have your place in the board anymore even though you are majority owner.
> My God, that gravy is horrible. They buy tap water for 15 to 20 cents a thousand gallons and then mix it with flour and starch and end up with pure wallpaper paste. And I know wallpaper paste, by God, because I’ve seen my mother make it.
When I grew up in the 80s in Canada, KFC was incredible, as were all of their items. At age 12, I scored a job working there too. During that time was when they announced their crispy chicken variant in Canada and "new taste" - but what we saw were new flour bags (we had to throw out the original flour bags), new oil in the cookers, new processes (no more soaking the chicken for 15 min before frying), and gravy that was made from a soup packet.
And while the chicken tasted the same, it was far more greasy and disgusting to handle compared to beforehand - and everyone noticed. I remember our manager telling us "Well I guess we now have to make it US style. But our prepared cost went from 11 cents per piece to 8 cents per piece after all bills are paid."
https://x.com/kfc/following
So if the first listed ingredient represents the most abundant ingredient...
Also, such a cop out that the FDA has allowed "other natural spices" to be a legit listing. Supposedly to protect corporate secrets blah blah. What if someone is allergic to one of those "natural spices". Either we're for accurate food labeling for the public's safety, or we're not. This in between state highly suggests we're not.
It's seasoning, so it doesn't seem surprising at all that MSG would be pretty high on the list. Do you think that's bad?