KFC: NOT SO FINGER LICKIN’ GOOD NOW!
As hundreds of branches remain closed because of a chicken shortage, desperate customers are contacting the police and MPs in a bid to resolve the crisis
IT’S a £1million a day crisis, has prompted calls to the police, seen furious constituents barracking their MPs, left thousands of workers in limbo and forced the closure of half the outlets of Britain’s second biggest restaurant chain. And the reason? A shortage of chicken.
When Kentucky Fried Chicken, whose sales exceed two million chicken pieces every day, changed the company it used to deliver its poultry, disaster struck. A nationwide collapse of new supplier DHL’s computer system meant deliveries could not be made… and hundreds of thousands of finger-lickin’ nuggets were stuck in DHL’s distribution centre in Rugby.
With up to 450 of its 900 restaurants closed for a fourth day yesterday the anger among customers became so intense that many even called the emergency services. Tower Hamlets Metropolitan Police Service took to Twitter to appeal for calm, saying: “Please do not contact us about the #KFCCrisis – it is not a police matter if your favourite eatery is not serving the menu that you desire.”
Greater Manchester Police Whitefield also tweeted: “For those who contacted the police about KFC being out of chicken – please STOP.”
Some took their grievances further, with Neil Coyle, MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, London, admitting: “I have been contacted by disappointed KFC customers.”
Desperate staff have even been approaching butchers in an attempt to find enough chicken to keep stores open, with one source claiming to have seen workers entering the back door of a restaurant in Kent “carrying black bags alleged to contain raw chicken”.
KFC’s contract with its wholesale suppliers mean it can’t sell chicken from third parties in any of its restaurants or put its name to any chicken that hasn’t passed its inspection standards.
The crisis has come about because of the differing way in DHL and KFC’s old distributor Bidvest Group run their systems. While Bidvest runs a supply chain based on six warehouses around the country, DHL has a single centralised distribution centre in Rugby.
Yesterday Mick Rix, of the GMB union, claimed that he had warned the chain that switching to DHL could cause problems when it announced it was changing distributors.
“We tried to warn KFC this decision would have consequences – well now the chickens are coming home to roost,” he said. “Bidvest is a specialist – a food distribution firm with years of experience. DHL is scratching around for any work it can get and undercut it. It’s an absolute cock-up. KFC is left with hundreds of restaurants closed while DHL tries to run the whole operation out of one distribution centre where conditions are an utter shambles.”
In a statement KFC said: “We anticipate the number of closures will reduce today and over the coming days as our teams work flat out all hours to clear the backlog. However we expect the disruption to some restaurants to continue over the remainder of the week, meaning some will be closed and others operating with a reduced menu or shortened hours.”
DHL has apologised for the “inconvenience and disappointment caused to KFC and its customers”. It is perhaps the biggest crisis faced by the company that began at a single service station in Corbin, Kentucky in 1930 and has since grown to become one of the world’s most recognisable brands, with 20,000 restaurants in 123 countries.
THE first branch in this country opened in 1965 after businessman Raymond Allen met Harland “Colonel” Sanders by chance while attending a conference in Chicago. Speaking three years ago, Allen, who sold KFC UK Ltd in 1973, recalled: “The Colonel was a very kind man who was very forthright. But at the time we met he was a small-time Southern state restaurant owner and I knew a lot about patents or registered trademarks. We had heard about him before the meeting. But when we first met him he had only one franchisee in America who sold the chicken as a menu item in his restaurant.
“We were in the fast food business and thought it would be the ideal product to sell in a takeaway. We had several Wimpy bars so decided to convert them into KFC.”
After the Colonel presented him with a hand-written copy of his famous secret recipe of “11 herbs and spices” Allen opened his first restaurant in Preston, Lancashire and admits that it took a little while to convince the British to try fried chicken. “In the UK in those days chicken was something you ate for Sunday dinner,” he said. “It was way before its time. We had to give it away to passers-by initially.”
However half a century and 900 British outlets later, Allen also claimed that the original concept had been “ruined” by recent changes to the menu. And in a neat ironic twist it seems the man who brought the Colonel’s fried chicken to Britain in the first place wouldn’t be in the least bit affected by the firm’s current problems.
“We have got one where I now live but I would not go in there,” he said. “I don’t use it and I think it is dreadful. The company has ruined the product. Instead of staying with one good thing that was sellable it has tried to compete with the other fast food units. They should have just stuck with the chicken.”
And now, it seems, it doesn’t even have that.