The Fast Food World is in an unprecedented place these days. Old faves fighting to lure back stolen customers. New upstarts enjoying top-of-the-heap fame. And fans enjoying unheard of deals…
News this morning of a very special deal intended to restore KFC’s fan awareness and make your end-of-summer dining easier than even. KFC is making it easier than ever to get your hit by giving away free Buckets of Regular, Original Chicken!
Can’t be true…
But it is – and it’s a simple equation. Make any regular purchase of more than $15 – through the App, of course – and get a free bucket of Original Fried Chicken. There are a couple additional catches, of course: If you do claim a free bucket of KFC Original, you have to send in your detailed observations on their sales-suffering flagship menu item.
Looks as though KFC – which has suffered some embarrassment lately in the chicken polls – appears to be looking for new, fresh ways to compete with the newer ‘kids on the block’ Popeye’s and Jolly-bee. They’ve been winning over fans from the old faves such as Popeye’s and Chick-Fil-A lately. And the Chicken spaceis to crammed with competition, everybody in it is getting worried about staying afloat.
First one is on them…
“By listening to our customers and addressing feedback, we’ll reclaim our rightful place in the fried chicken game we started. Come back and give us a shot—your first bucket’s on us,” Catherine Tan-Gillespie, President of KFC US, confirmed in a news release.
What you get is a regular Bucket of KFC Original Fried Chicken plus an order of their brand new Ken-tucky Fried Pickles – for a limited time. The new side dish features juicy dill pickles coated in KFC’s signature breading and fried until crispy. The new side is billed as tangy and crunchy, the fried per-fect for on-the-go snacking or dunking into a cup of the chain’s zesty Comeback Sauce or Ranch.
My take
Yow! This is drastic action for what KFC can rightfully consider drastic times. But any legendary, le-gacy brand deserves a fair chance to redeem itself given the current Fast Food market upheaveal headlined by sudden, unprecedented competition in the Chicken sector from players accustomed to duking it out in the burger area!
On a broader front, it’s another indication of the widespread shake-out in the Fast Food sector in general that I’ve been warning fays to watch for for more than a decade. Where the players will end up, nodody knows. But I predict there will be fewer of them when the smoke clears. And maybe a dramatically-reshaped Fast Food Sphere in which they’ll be forced to learn new strategies and tactics to survive much less thrive…
~ Maggie J.