KFC Taco Bell Combos

[Romr123]

A&W has some interesting units around Detroit which result in some different use cases (note that A&W is far, far bigger in Canada than the US). One is in the outer ring of a shopping mall in Dearborn surrounded by office buildings--full size with drivethrough, only burger chain for a mile or so--a fair lunchtime crowd. Another is a car-hop era (1960-ish) in an affluent inner ring suburban downtown...does all right (there's a 12-month DQ just down the block). SE Michigan has a long history of drive-ins, with nearly every first and second-ring suburban community still having a walk-up 9-month Dairy Queen and multiple other local-favorite 9-month ice cream stands. Our long summer evenings make it feasible...these places are beloved and preserved.

[Romr123]

Also--first KenTacoHut opened in roughly 1988 in Overland Park, KS (119/Metcalf). I worked for KFC at the time and I seem to recall it was at base a KFC. Kansas City was a corporate market (as opposed to franchised) at that point. In those days as they were figuring things out each of the concepts opened a couple of units with combinations of the other offerings to see what worked. 119/Metcalf was a real showplace--enormous. As mentioned, different combinations have come and gone over the years...I have long since lost track of how they're doing things now (other than the fact that what used to be a 1/3 corporate 2/3 franchise KFC system is now about 96% franchise...in those days the bigger cities were generally corporate, and smaller cities/rural areas were franchised, although there were some variations--Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale were intermixed markets, Flint, MI was corporate except for a single franchise location on Dort Hwy near I-69, Detroit was corporate south of 8 mile, mostly franchised north of 8 mile. The restaurants in 1988 hadn't yet been all homogenized--there were still places like Richmond, VA where the original franchisee opened unique-looking buildings that you didn't see elsewhere. Kansas City (noted above) particularly was fond of strip center in-line locations.

[storewanderer]

It appears the Overland Park site has been rebuilt and is just a KFC/Taco Bell now. Probably the nicest version of the two I've seen. It does appear there is a rather large counter between the two being used as a beverage counter. Maybe that was the Pizza Hut space.

What I find interesting in Overland Park is they have two separate drive throughs and two separate counters for each brand. Really it looks more like a mall food court that just so happens to be freestanding and just so happens to only have two tenants, than a co-branded restaurant.

KFC in Canada loves strip center in-line locations.

[Romr123]

As I mentioned, I've entirely lost track of how things ended up. That store in Overland Park, in my recollection, was a full KFC and a full Taco Bell, with only personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut (hence the two drive-throughs). There was a lot of learning going on--some of the other ones were KFC Express (pre-breaded chicken items only--wings/Littles/sandwiches and fries) with the other concepts. This was before WingStreet. (Parenthetically, it was in the parking lot of a strip center with a Super Food Barn--I believe it was the last store opened by Safeway in KC Metro)

[cjd]

With Pizza Hut going from a freestanding dine-in model to just a carry-out strip mall location model, I wonder how that could affect them being paired with other locations? It could be a way to get away from needing it's own space at all, and just be combined in an existing location.