Austin McConnell made a video about 4 years ago on the decline of KFC[0] and just made a follow up last night[1] about how they've gotten a lot worse in a bunch of metrics but are still for some reason blowing budget on stupid marketing.
On a more personal note, my mom grew up down the street from Sanders and it's always left a really bad taste in my mouth what they've done with his image. It's not like he was some made up character made to encapsulate the feel of a old-timey southern gentleman or whatever, he was a real guy they turned into a caricature to try to catch the "ironic" wave with the youths
Out of all the marketing that the colonel didn't like it seems like the current campaign would have been one he was OK with seeing as he was still alive and well when the Japanese statues of him came out. What he hated was how they destroyed the taste of his chicken and sides which have continued to become crap over the years. MBAs have made sure KFC will never be as good as Popeyes.
> MBAs have made sure KFC will never be as good as Popeyes.
While far superior to KFC, Popeyes has second tier chicken. It wasn't Popeyes that killed KFC as a business, it was Chick-fil-A, which has conquered the chicken fast food market in the US and will continue to bury everyone else. They have far better chicken than Popeyes.
Have you tried the new Popeyes chicken sandwich? In my opinion the spicy version is the single best item of fast food on the market today. The quality of the chicken is superior.
The chicken is and when compared directly to the Chick-Fil-A equivalent its definitely better.
But I never ordered the Chick-Fil-A equivalent. After the initial time trying it, I don't get whats all that enjoyable about a sandwich that is just bread, chicken, and a couple pickles. Once Popeye's gets lettuce, tomato, and cheese then I may have no reason to ever go to Chick-Fil-A
as a self-appointed connoisseur of fried poultry, and after EXTENSIVE (and delicious) testing, i can come to no other conclusion except that i agree w/this statement: spicy popeye's chix sammy >>>> chick-fil-a.
They’re not exactly the same market—Chick-Fil-A is chicken sandwiches which Popeye’s didn’t have until recently, and I don’t know if KFC ever did. And Popeye’s and KFC sell fried chicken pieces, which Chick-Fil-A doesn’t. When I’m in the mood for fried chicken, I’m usually not after a sandwich.
And I’ll agree that Chick-Fil-A is good, but I think their biggest selling point is their customer service, not their chicken.
I swear I remember KFC being delicious, though that may be rose tinted glasses. I went a few weeks ago for the first time in a long time and the chicken just tastes like MSG without much else. It was really disappointing for something that was once a guilty pleasure.
I'm a long way from home and grabbed a KFC meal over Thanksgiving. I haven't had it since ... 2015, I think? and that was overseas.
My dad would sometimes buy it when we were kids, and it did hit the nostalgia buttons while also providing me with a few days worth of food. It tasted like I remember it. Sure it's fast food chicken, but it's not bad.
Although I guess when comparing it to Popeyes and some of the other fast food chicken offerings, it hasn't provided anything new in a while. Maybe they should try to get into the chicken sandwich space and try to market against Chick-fil-a?
I suspect this console will turn into a relic we'll see in videos 10 years from now, similar to the Hot Wheels and Barbie PC. At least it will probably be more useful than an Ouya.
in 2010, i was lucky enough to have KFC in beijing. it's a totally different experience, and was absolutely delicious.
once covid stops being a PITA, and travel becomes a reality, i strongly recommend trying out american fast food chains in other countries. i'm almost always surprised w/the quality!
Except McDonald’s, which for the core menu, tastes identical the world over. I believe this is deliberate and by design. They also accept USD in lieu of local tender the world over too (but you’ll get your change in local tender).
Not as delicious as Roy Rogers. As a kid - Roy Rogers > KFC > Popeye's. Too bad Roy Rogers disappeared at the turn of the century. Now Popeye's > KFC but man do I miss the crispy Roy Rogers chicken.
If the food tastes like just salt without much else, then obviously that's not great. How is this a difficult point to understand? It's the quantity that's the problem, not simply the presence of it.
Yeah I like MSG and use it at home. But I don't want it to be the only thing I taste. I really couldn't taste any other seasonings except maybe a bit of pepper.
I quite like the taste, it has a mild but distinctive flavor but it's much better in the background and it can be overpowering if it's the main flavor, which was my complaint with KFC. Kinda similar to salt, a bit of salt makes everything else taste better but too much overwhelms.
And claims that the 'special spice mix' is now nothing special at all, that would make sense, there's not a great deal of flavour in the coating on KFC - I'm sure it used to have more to it when I was younger
Had KFC a few weeks ago for the first time in forever. The MBAs have optimized the flavor right out of it. Biscuits tasted like flour. Only flavor the chicken had was the seasoning in the batter.
I'm Australian but living in the UK -- it's common for Australians coming here to be shocked at how disgusting KFC is here. It really does seem like they're trying to make things dry and flavourless and use the wrong sauce for everything, the gulf in quality is really surprising for such a big company.
I would guess, altho I've since turned vegan and never tried it, that their flagship original recipe chicken is identical or similar.
But the wraps, burgers etc are very dry in the UK. The bun is dry and styrofoamy, the sauces are weird and seem out of place, overly sweet and too tangy, very artificial, and just the wrong choice. The vegetables seem less fresh and more flavourless.
The chips are unsalted and underseadoned and bland.
I tried it enough times to be sure it wasn't just a Covid induced lack of taste.
I've since stopped eating at large American chains and stopped eating animal products altogether, so it won't be a worry for me in the future.
KFC in Korea is quite good, more like how I remember KFC as a kid. That said, other fried chicken in Korea is so much better that it seems pointless to eat KFC.
Why? Pizza Hut was a fun experience as a Western group visiting Hong Kong some years ago; it isn't nearly what you'd think for "Pizza Hut"!
The point being: perhaps the local branding runs differently. McDonalds was mostly the same, though having real sugar and fish oil instead of corn oil was also a fascinating experience.
The Pizza in Korea is an entirely different thing altogether, much more than so than some HN people would screech their heads off at comparing Italian Pizza to the US.
The fried chicken is pretty much the same but better, because of better process. Also better chicken breed.
I've had both. They taste different in terms of flavor profile and texture and are definitely not interchangeable. Sometimes you want one and sometimes you want the other.
Saying that one is "better" in the vast category that is fried chicken is like trying to insist on the superiority of differently flavored noodle dishes.
Years ago I had a genius idea of making a USB-powered mini shawarma machine that you could have on your desk, and shave off bits of meat during the day. Sometimes I still lay awake at night, wondering if that would have worked.
Honestly this seems like an efficient use of waste-heat generated by the computer -- use it to keep you meal warm!
Maybe in the future recipes will come with cryptographic hashes you need to crack in order to warm your processors to the appropriate level and length for cooking
I started you mining Litecoin back in something like 2014, when I was in grad school. My appartment had purely resistive baseboard heating, so might as well mine some coin whole heating during Canadian winters right?
I stopped after making a few bucks because, well, I needed the PC to do my research work and investing in a dedicated rig wasn't really worth it (on a grad student budget).
KFC has had some absurd marketing in the past few years. Another example is the anime dating sim game they released, "I Love You, Colonel Sanders!" Personally I am a fan, I love the creativity.
I love it when food companies make high quality video games even if they are blatant advertisements. Chex Quest was probably the greatest cereal box prize I ever got.
Since 2015, they've had a gimmick around always changing up who portrays Sanders, including Reba McEntire briefly 2018. They haven't gone "all out" on any one Sanders, so it's not really clear what you're on about.
The video shows car racing, astronaut space walking, iron smithing, a baby in a uterus and other human feats. Certainly it's not suggesting that KFC did those.
On a more personal note, my mom grew up down the street from Sanders and it's always left a really bad taste in my mouth what they've done with his image. It's not like he was some made up character made to encapsulate the feel of a old-timey southern gentleman or whatever, he was a real guy they turned into a caricature to try to catch the "ironic" wave with the youths
[0]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1eaQrxA6ZE
[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np5tFlmRUIc