KFC’s Menu Shake-Up: Balancing Efficiency and Customer Experience
KFC, the popular fast-food chicken joint, is in the midst of a menu makeover that has fans in a state of emergency. The iconic fast food chain is saying goodbye to some of its favorite menu items, including classics like popcorn chicken and wings, as well as favorite condiments like Nashville Hot Sauce. The selection of drinks is also changing, strawberry lemonade is no longer available, and the sweet delight of chocolate biscuits is also being removed from the menu. While these changes may leave some patrons feeling at a loss, don’t worry because the original Colonel Sanders KFC recipe, complete with the legendary eleven herbs and spices, will remain intact.
YUM! Brands owns KFC. The restaurant chain has announced that their “menu simplification” will go into effect very soon to increase worker productivity and make it easier for customers to place orders by limiting the alternatives available to them.
KFC will also reduce the number of items on its menus so that the fast food chain can focus on creative solutions that can appeal to the American consumer market.
The goal is to consistently deliver our most popular products flawlessly while paving the way for new ones. Brittany Wilson, director of KFC USA, spoke to Yahoo Finance.
In the coming month or so, the menu at a KFC restaurant in your neighborhood is likely to change. The business is trying to get rid of some popular menu items to “make room for this big spring of innovation that KFC has come up with.”
For a variety of reasons, including the fact that “they weren’t available nationally or that [they] weren’t necessarily growing in the national sales mix,” Wilson said, the items that were selected for removal from the menu were selected for removal.
And for some franchise owners, menu adjustments seem to be effective. One such person, Justin Stewart, who also serves as COO of Stewart Restaurant Group and owns a KFC franchise, said his employees are already noticing the benefits. The workforce has reduced both drive-thru rates and the time it takes employees to pack orders.
“With less product on our packaging line, our team members were able to pack orders faster. As a result, we reduced our order throughput time by 11 seconds.”
The average KFC drive-thru customer has to wait about 63.6 seconds for their order, according to data from the Intouch Insight 2022 Annual Drive-Thru Study. The entire service time was 239.02 seconds or almost four minutes. And a line of cars often consisted of two.
Stewart claimed that simplifying the menu also increased order accuracy.
“By eliminating less popular menu items, we were able to increase order accuracy, expand product selection, and free up space in the kitchen. We also reduced controllable costs with less waste, less prep time, and less cleanup time.
Stewart reports that because they can “navigate the new menu faster and more easily,” his customers have had a “positive” experience with the menu redesign.
How do you feel about the changes in the KFC menu?