Now, 75 years after "Colonel" Harland Sanders first served his original recipe at a six-seat dining table in rural Kentucky, the chain is betting $185 million on a massive, bizarre turnaround campaign in hopes of winning a seat again at the fast-food table.
The chain is blasting out TV ads, offering new Southern-style grub and remodeling some of its 4,300 stores with humanized touches, like boards they say will name the regional farm where their chickens came from.
Perhaps KFC's biggest gamble: Reviving the long-dead visage of Colonel Sanders himself, "the brand’s greatest asset," with a handful of increasingly odd "web, broadcast, social media and in-store experiences."
"Young people all have this idea that everyone can be a star on social media. Well, the Colonel was the consummate American showman," said Kevin Hochman, KFC's chief marketing officer. "People see him as an old person, because we haven't talked about him in a while. But he was the person with bling before bling was even a word."
In the United States, KFC has joined other once-infallible fast-food kings, like McDonald's, in seeing a drop-off in business from buyers increasingly lured to fast-casual, advertised-fresh outposts like Chipotle Mexican Grill. In China, the chain (and others) has seen sales disappear amid worries over the Avian flu.
It has struggled against small-but-growing rivals like Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen and Bojangles’ Famous Chicken ‘n Biscuits, which debuted on the stock market this month, and faces new competition from upstarts like classy burger joint Shake Shack, whose shares climbed last week after it filed a trademark application for "Chicken Shack."
But KFC's biggest loss so far has been in its Cersei-Margaery-style battle with Chick-fil-A, its younger Southern rival. After eclipsing KFC in 2012, the cult favorite known for its boneless chicken sandwiches ran with the prize, making $1 billion more in the U.S. than KFC did last year.
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