Lane Cardwell

KGC is a BFD

In English, Kentucky Grilled Chicken is a Bodacious Food Direction for the company formerly known as KFC. Well, they will probably be known as KFC for a little while longer, but they are giving customers a chance to try the results of their five-year development efforts with a 5,000 restaurant rollout today. In the QSR world of restaurant ideas this grilled chicken is a big one.

KFC has gone to the plate a couple of times before and struck out in their efforts to find a grilled chicken product that would fit their existing product line. First, there was Rotisserie Gold in the early ‘90s. It was a good product but was dropped due to equipment issues and long cook times. Customers never knew when they went to a KFC for the product whether they could get any or not. Not exactly a stable new product foundation. Later, a Tender Roast product was added but dropped after two years. It apparently died of customer neglect.

The secret behind the grilled chicken this time is that it is marinated, seasoned and then prepared on grill racks in a custom-designed oven that takes about 20 minutes to cook in a patented process. Apparently the fact that the oven is a closed unit produces a chicken that is tender, juicy and seals in the flavor. It has its own secret blend of 6 herbs and spices that will sit in a vault next to the Colonel’s original recipe of 11 herbs and spices. I would love to know how much overlap there is between the 6 in the new and 11 in the original, assuming that there is any overlap.

There is no doubt that there is a market for a healthier chicken product at KFC. What will be interesting to watch is the impact that the grilled product has on the legacy fried chicken that Colonel Harlan Sanders developed decades ago. The more that the company touts the “healthier” aspects of its new product the more their customers might question whether or not they should be eating the original recipe. The company is gambling that if they lose the original recipe customer that they will lose it to themselves with the grilled product. I am sure that this was a key part of the long test that KFC put the product through.

The grilled chicken will cost the same as Original Recipe chicken. KFC will offer customers a free piece of grilled chicken on April 27 and are estimating that they will give away 4 million pieces on UNFry Day.

Professional curmudgeon Michael Jacobson, executive director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, AKA the Food Police, still couldn’t bring himself to pat KFC on the back for bringing out a healthier product. “Still too much sodium,” he whined. PETA, People Eating Tasty Animals, cheered on the development since it offered the public yet one more way to keep down the overpopulation of chickens.

Film at 11.

Posted by Lane Cardwell on April 20, 2009 | Comments (5)