finger lickin good no more?? KFC goes 'so good'.
This month in the UK we wait with bated breath to see the new healthier, more nutritionally transparent menu from KFC. I see it now. Raw cashew nut replacement chicken buckets, raw mock chicken fillet burgers….Oh what a raw dream.
Perhaps my sarcasm is misplaced because already, earlier this year, KFC did the unthinkable and ditched their 60+ year old tagline ‘finger lickin good’ for ‘so good.’ An altruistic passion for our nutritional welfare? Perhaps not. Falling sales and increased demand for healthier food options are behind their decision and more importantly for us shallow consumers, KFC understands our desire to be seen to be ‘making a good brand choice.’ This is exciting (to me anyway…) and reveals the tide of interest from a mass audience for food of nutritional value despite the fact that in the UK alone, KFC sells a chicken hotwing every 3.6 seconds amounting to 114m a year. Checking their statistics (as you do…) I see in comparison they sell only 3.3m pots of beans, 2.3m tubs of coleslaw and 7.8 million corn cobs each year. It’ll be interesting to see whether we start to ditch chicken wings for corn cobs in our zest for something ‘more gooder’ but in the mean time I like that we, the masses, are trying to be healthier and therefore using our power to push big food brands in the right direction.
As softpedia.com reports: KFC is out to prove that it’s also about food and not just excellent taste, so it’s switching up some things in UK restaurants like bringing new cooking oils, introducing new foods that are healthier options to the current offering and sourcing the chicken from the UK.
The rebranding exercise will coincide with the introduction of healthier frying oils and meals cooked on a griddle instead of in a frier. There are also plans to show the calorie content of all items on KFC’s menus from September,” says the same publication (The Daily Mail).
KFC is known in the trade as a QSR (quick service restaurant) so it was a big surprise to find any reference to raw food on trade website qsrweb.com. Here my new guru, Betsy Craig, writes the blog Raw explained: Tips and tricks for offering raw dishes on your menu in August this year.
As she concludes; As more Americans focus on including healthy, fresh vegetables and fruits in every meal, there is more and more interest in making those nutrient dense meals the meal in itself. Offering a raw menu item or two at your restaurant will help you to best serve this growing demographic. Be sure to include full nutritional information on the menu for this group and all your menu items.
Isn’t Betsy fabulous? Perhaps KFC’s next evolutionary brand step will be ‘so raw.’ I might write to them and suggest it in case they missed her article…
The Raw Food Hypocrite 
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