All right, so check it, I miss eating at KFC.
When I was a kid, Kentucky Fried Chicken was the bomb.
My seven-year-old heart would jump with joy whenever my grandparents
decided to pull into the KFC in my hometown for lunch.
We get a big bucket of the 11 herbs and spices, green beans, coleslaw...
... enough Pepsi cola for everybody the whole nine yards, and it was awesome!
You couldn't beat it! Who needs Christmas when you've got KFC?
The chicken was crispy the restaurant was clean and the eatin' was good.
But 20 years later I go to KFC practically never.
Maybe the drive-through if there's absolutely nowhere else to eat,
but never ever...
EVEEEEEER inside.
Why? Because KFC ain't what it used to be and we all know it.
The past decade hasn't been kind to the Colonel: Consumers have rated the restaurant as consistently terrible.
They've been overtaken by Chick-fil-A as the largest chicken chain in the US by sales,
They have a truly awful marketing campaign that's generated more anger than interest...
They ranked at the very bottom of customer service in 2013 and they've been steadily closing stores since 2005. So...
You might not know it, but there are five keys to the success of your average fast food joint.
Fail in any of these areas and folks aren't going to want to buy your product.
Less folks buy, the less money you make. Less money you make, the closer your franchise comes to extinction.
So let's see how your average KFC stacks up.
First thing you're going to need is fast and efficient service.
QSR puts Kentucky Fried Chicken in the middle of the pack: Not poor, not great
With an average service time of 3.39 minutes, and an 88.6% accuracy on orders.
Now, a question for the Colonel's corporate bigwigs:
If you owned a skydiving business and the parachutes only opened 88.6% of the time,
Would that be acceptable?
(No idea), Would you skydive there?
No, so why are you surprised when your customer base shrinks if out of every 100 people to go there,
11 or 12 be charged incorrectly?
(Sorry, I'm doing that accent thing...)
KFC, get it together bruh!
Have a training day! Get your people on the right page!
Bump that figure up to the low 90s, And you'll see more customers.
An A - always looks better on a report card than a B+. You feel me?
Next, let's talk about food quality.
Look, I know it's a little bit picky to ask for a bucket of fried chicken to not be totally greasy...
But why ask me if I want original or crispy if it's all going to be covered in oil anyway?
Just ask me what you're really asking...
I can't even hold on to this stuff when I eat it and even if I get a solid grip,
the thing will fall apart before I get it in my mouth!
I remember when KFC meant "finger lickin' good."
Now, I've got to wash my hands in a sink because licking this grease off could seriously affect my health.
I shouldn't have to put on hazmat suit and get the green light from the CDC before tackling an eight-piece bucket meal!
Next category: cash money, honey.
Look if it's going to be messy and give me congestive heart failure at least don't charge me an arm and a leg for it too.
You're out of your mind if you think I'm going to pay $22 plus tax for eight pieces of slimy chicken.
16 piece family meal for about $41 in total?
GET OUTTA HERE!
$41 will buy you a nice meal at a fancy restaurant with mood lighting and a personal waiter!
Why would anybody want to pay that much money to come here?!
If you want more customers:
I see what you're trying to do with the $5 fill up and the $10 chicken share.
If people think your food is too expensive, the solution isn't to create a budget meal for them
The solution is to:
RIght across the street from this KFC is a Popeyes where you can get the exact same meal for cheaper.
That's a stupid business strategy for you guys!
Hey, which of these prices you think looks better on a window sign?
If you want to charge people THAT much to eat at your restaurant,
at LEAST let the dining experience be worth it!
And that leads us to our next point: the cleanliness of your crib.
So you want to know the real reason I don't go to KFC anymore? Here it is.
This is me walking into a KFC while out on the road. Totally unplanned didn't set anything up
Just walked into a random location without preparation and
Oh look, it's completely disgusting.
Because y'all have a serious sanitation problem.
6% of your restaurants are dirty or damaged.
6 percent?!
That's the highest of any of your competitors!
That's triple the national average!
YOU GUYS ARE GETTING BEAT... BY TACO CABANA!!
Most people nowadays know to stay away from the inside of KFC,
walking into this particular location I noticed the tables are dirty the bathroom lock is broken
there's grease and grime everywhere
there's a disgusting mat laying out the very front that's DAMP with all kinds of spilled drinks and chicken grease for everybody to walk on!
And NONE of the staff seems to think that any of this needs to be cleaned up!
YOUR CRIB IS GROSS!
Look, take a weekend, close your stores, retrain your staff and invest some of your money in private sanitation inspectors!
You could fix everything else on this list and if you don't shed that stigma folks have about your business's cleanliness,
you'll NEVER get out of the hole you're in.
Last but not least: Marketing.
Look, I don't know what you guys were thinking this year with your comedian rotation Colonel Sanders shtick.
But it's about to grate on the Nation's last nerve.
We've got real problems in this country to deal with like ISIS and health care,
And all we want is to watch TV without seeing one of your poorly conceived and self-depreciating commercials.
The wink and nod routine keeps falling flat so cut it. Entrepreneur says it best:
Your own company's research says that one in five people hate your ad campaign.
Yet, here's your CEO saying:
Hey, Greg, respectfully?
The indifference folks were feeling came from years of you giving everybody the impression
you don't really care about the quality of your product. If you don't care, why should we as consumers care?
Your problem isn't that you're losing relevance!
It's that you're acting indifferent to legitimate problems!
Until you want to take your business seriously, and advertise a KFC that people will (you know...) be happy to eat at...
you're not going to rebound!
If you want a new Colonel, cut the live-action one, Go animated.
No, not THIS trainwreck... go retro!
Get the guys from Fallout to handle the aesthetic and you'll have a marketing strategy that looks
completely different from anything else out there, and you'll find your footing.
Think about it, how many fast-food restaurants do you know are doing
hand drawn animated commercials these days?
...Yeah, exactly.
There's your opportunity.
Step three, what ever this is...
It's not funny! None of this is funny!
You're not gonna annoy someone into buying your product, right? So why do you want to annoy your customer base?!
UGH!
Look, it's not like the good folks at KFC don't KNOW any of this,
they somehow pulled it off in foreign markets. KFC's exploded in popularity overseas, especially Japan.
If they can somehow get folks who can't read speak or understand the King's English to like their stuff,
There's no reason they can't do the same in the good old US of A!
It's a shame to their board of directors that a business named Kentucky Fried Chicken is valued
MORE by people in Tokyo than in the state it's named after!
KFC. I love you, but you got to get it together.
I want future generations to know what it's like to eat the Colonel's chicken.
The way I used to. The way we all used to.
Your ship is sinking, but you still have time to fix it.
If you find yourself in doubt, just remember to ask:
What would the Colonel do?
(Singing) "It's so nice, nice to feel"~
"So good about a meal"~
"So good about Kentucky Fried Chicken!"~
Colonel: "It's nice to feel so good about a meal!"
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