As a Kentucky native, I can tell you that in the 1960s and '70s, Kentucky Fried Chicken was something to behold- quick, delicious, and fairly local. It may have been "fast food," but it wasn't a burger to eat in your car. Rather, you picked up a bucket full of chicken to take home to the family, along with potatoes, gravy, and rolls. Instant Sunday dinner! Then Colonel Sanders sold his creation and spent the rest of his life complaining about what the corporate bean counters did to ruin his signature dishes. The quality of the food sunk item by item, and the name changed to KFC. The chain decided to be real fast food, and concentrated on a range of new items you could eat while driving. The prices soared and the portions shrunk.
Of course, there was a lot more involved than that, and hardly any of my opinions in the above paragraph are addressed in this video from Weird History Food. KFC suffered from corporate trades and mergers, over-expansion, ridiculous promotional stunts, and most of all, competition from other chains that specialize in fried chicken. Yet they still make money, and this video explains how.
KFC.
Their downfall started with the rise of Popeyes and the sale to PepsiCo. They spun off to Yum brands, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, a&w root beerThey let the bean counters take over and did things cheap. Americans wanted quality not crapThey didn’t react to that and just thought people would come anyway. The rise of places like Raising Canes and others took their market share and they didn’t update a plan for facilities, marketing, etc… Old, dilapidated building cheaply converted to a combo box with tacos or pizza became the norm. They lost their identity and became unrecognizable. Fresh biscuits from Popeyes were so much better than the rolls KFC was serving and their biscuits were made in a commissary in Cleveland or Cincinnati They looked at cost, not quality and it cost them They lost their experts that were running the restaurants and replaced them with middle aged women that could fry chicken and roll burritos.People like me don’t really exist in food service anymore
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