Kentucky Fried Chicken — or KFC, as it is better known — suffered from a shortage of chicken to the point where it was forced to either temporarily close or offer a limited menu of items at most of its 900 restaurants in the United Kingdom…
How KFC Addressed Its Chicken Shortage
…and to address the shortage, a full page advertisement reportedly shows an empty bucket with the letters KFC — which comprises the logo of the company — rearranged to FCK.
KFC apologises with a full page ad in today's Metro. A masterclass in PR crisis management.#KFCCrisis pic.twitter.com/ZF4SfAuHl5
— Andrew Bloch (@AndrewBloch) February 23, 2018
The copy of the advertisement reads as follows:
WE’RE SORRY
A chicken restaurant without any chicken. It’s not ideal. Huge apologies to our customers, especially those who travelled out of their way to find we were closed. And endless thanks to our KFC team members and our franchise partners for working tirelessly to improve the situation. It’s been a hell of a week, but we’re making progress, and every day more and more fresh chicken is being delivered to our restaurants. Thank you for bearing with us.
Visit kfc.co.uk/crossed-the-road for details about your local restaurant.
This is not the first time that the company ran out of chicken, as I first reported in this article back on Saturday, April 11, 2009.
How does a restaurant whose main food item is chicken run out of chicken?!?
There's gossip in the hen house, here's the facts…
*UPDATE: Now none of our team members will lose out financially this week. pic.twitter.com/8F6ipUvIuc
— KFC UK (@KFC_UKI) February 21, 2018
In this particular situation, the shortage was reportedly caused by “operational issues” with DHL, which became the new delivery provider for KFC when it switched delivery partners on Wednesday, February 14, 2018.
Happy Fry-day 🍗😴 pic.twitter.com/E2DOxiznH0
— KFC UK (@KFC_UKI) February 23, 2018
Greater than 90 percent of the locations have since reopened.
Summary
I generally find that the fare of American fast food restaurants outside of the United States are consistently of substantially superior quality than of those within the United States. I personally do not eat Kentucky Fried Chicken; but I was in Romania some years ago with several friends who decided that they wanted to eat at a local KFC restaurant. They ordered an incredible amount of fried chicken — and they polished all of it off, saying that it was “the best chicken they have ever eaten at a KFC restaurant by far”; and “why can’t the locations within the United States make chicken this good?”
Some people may see this stunt as a clever way to address a serious issue which has had a significant impact upon a company; but to take the logo of the company and arrange it in such a manner would be committing brand suicide for some companies.
Companies who value their brand usually have standards to which users must strictly adhere. When a company violates its own brand standards, it potentially jeopardizes its image to the public.
Imagine the logo of United Airlines rearranged to spell Untied after its debacles during the past couple of years — including when a passenger was forcibly dragged off of an airplane against his will…
…but then again, United Airlines seems to manage to recover anyway — and thus, KFC most likely will as well, as it has done repeatedly over the years.
I could not fabricate this bizarre story if I tried…
Source: Kentucky Fried Chicken or KFC.
