To boost its appeal with consumers and stay competitive as chicken concepts proliferate, KFC is taking a page from, well, itself.
The chain is changing the way it prepares fried chicken, returning to the methods employed by its founder, Colonel Harland Sanders, the New York Business Journal reports.
“Over the last 10 years or so, we haven’t been living up to the standards of Colonel Sanders himself,” KFC President Jason Marker said in a press conference, as reported by the Business Journal. “In talking to Americans about the chain’s fried chicken, people continuously end up commenting, ‘I don’t recall the last time I had KFC.’ Our customers were saying, ‘Your food doesn’t taste the same as it used to. Your restaurants don’t smell the same as they used to.’”
KFC is retraining staff at its 19,000 global units to use its original 25-minute preparation process and is updating unit kitchens to facilitate the change. It's also rolling out its "Colonel Quality Taste Guarantee," which promises to remake customers' meals if they aren't satisfied.
The QSR jumpstarted these efforts—which it's calling "Re-Colonelization"—by gathering nearly all of its general managers in a series of 43 rallies around the country.
As previously reported by Restaurant Business, KFC is in the midst of a millennial-friendly redesign effort that will retrofit 70 percent of its domestic restaurants by 2017.
Read the full story via the New York Business Journal.
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