On April 14th, KFC will roll out a new product: Original Recipe Boneless. What's more, the company will cease to work on any new products with chicken on the bone, and may eventually stop offering the classic fried chicken on the bone. The aim is to cater to those who grew up eating chicken nuggets and to promote eating in the car to boost lunchtime sales.
The risky move, three years in the making, is KFC's very public admission that its core product -- a big bucket filled with fried chicken legs, thighs and breasts on the bone -- may ultimately be banished to the dust-heap of fast-food lore. Replacing it: boneless white and dark meat chicken chunks about twice the size of tenders -- but still deep-fried with the same super-secret herbs and spices. The target: an ultra-finicky generation of Millennials.
"This is the biggest new product introduction for KFC in modern times," says John Cywinski, 50, the former McDonald's brand strategist, who has been U.S. president of KFC for two years. USA TODAY was invited behind the scenes for one day at a nondescript, free-standing KFC store at a suburban strip mall, where the new chicken line was being tested for the day. "This will be one of the great American turnaround stories," says Cywinski.
Or not.
KFC representatives cited research that says six in ten customers prefer chicken without bones. The new boneless chicken will cost about 25 cents more per piece than classic fried chicken. Oh yeah, the new product is skinless, too. Colonel Sanders was reported to be rolling in his grave. Link -via Fark
Two years later, she was asking me if I knew where she could buy a whole chicken. Her usual grocery store had ceased selling them whole, only in parts.
I've plucked chickens, butchered sheep, cattle and deer. Caught and gutted fish... and fried 'em all up in a pan, and consider these skills valuable, in that I can never forget that something died to become my food. I'm concerned about what happens to us in this culture or any other, when we no longer make that connection.