How Taco Bell Crippled KFC & Pizza Hut

[Brian Lutz]

It's a lengthy watch at over 40 minutes, but goes into a lot of detail (including a large number of charts) about how Taco Bell quietly went from a minor part of the Yum Brands portfolio to their biggest asset, quietly growing in the US even as KFC and Pizza Hut neglected their domestic operations in favor of rapid international expansion to crowd out McDonald's from international markets, ultimately to the point that Taco Bell is pretty much the only thing keeping those brands afloat.

[wnetmacman]

Disclaimer: I did not (and am not going to) watch the video.

Yum has not invested significantly in improving Pizza Hut or KFC since their purchase, only in simplifying prep and menus, often at the expense of taste and freshness; a case in point is Pizza Hut.

I worked in a restaurant owned by a large franchisee from 1990-1993. During that time, *all* items except meat and cheese were prepped in store. Sauce was made from tomato paste, water and spices. Dough was hand mixed, cut and rolled. Vegetables were cut in the restaurant. Prep was the largest labor component, but the result was a fresh, good tasting product. We switched to precut veggies when I was there. Dough is prepped and shipped frozen now to the stores, and sauce comes in *gulp* a bag. Quality for Pizza Hut isn't as good as you'll get at that local pizzeria any more.

KFC similarly simplified prep; only pre-cut pieces of chicken are sent out; no longer does the location prep the bird whole, selling liver and gizzards on the side. They get wing, thigh, leg and breast. Quality is lost.

There is very little prep at Taco Bell either, except there never was. I say Yum is trying to kill them all. That's why they cast off Long John Silvers and A&W - some things you can't change and still profit.

[storewanderer]

Pizza Hut has been in cost cut mode for years. The "Express" format may have gotten the brand into more places but it also put out a product that wasn't really as good as a larger pizza in a regular location made fresh would be and I often wonder if those hurt the brand more than what little royalties they generated helped the franchisor.

KFC in the US has just been laughably mismanaged. They have let unit volumes fall down so low... for one reason or another... I think both the franchisees and franchisor are to blame for KFC's current situation in the US.

Taco Bell seems to have been cheap to run to begin with and they have what seems like a more loyal following among a younger customer base. Taco Bell also continues to grow while the other two brands are just limping along at best in the US. Taco Bell keeps changing their menu but some of what they come out with is interesting to try. Staffing levels in the Taco Bell units also seem much better than the KFC or Pizza Hut units.

KFC is just so bad... I went a couple weeks ago and ended up throwing the food away without consuming due to operational issues I saw but didn't want to confront the "manager" for a refund. This time I will NOT return there ever again. Even my twice a year visits are done. I filed a complaint with the KFC website. NO response. They do not care.

[Romr123]

I believe this is one in a series of videos---really quite well done and interestingly analytical. Watched a couple during Christmas specifically on KFC (essentially how long can KFC have such a strong international business with product innovation etc when the US business is so mismanaged) and Popeyes (how do you go from worst to first then to worst again by cheapening food and service).

I do want to correct one thing---KFC has not cut chicken in store in at least 35 years....I was in their Worldwide Quality department from 1987-1989 and every bit of chicken coming into the store was already in parts. I had field colleagues embedded within our poultry vendors in the large chicken processing plants coast-to-coast. This was the day of the 9-piece cut (splitting the breast into 3....2 "ribs" and a "keel"). These were automated robotic cuts (even at that time) where they would do the "silver dollar cut" for the wings, then the 3 way split of the breast, then the legs and thighs. I never did need to visit the plants--these folks were typically food processing engineers and had (like my role as mystery shopper) very little experience in the kitchens at the restaurant. I cannot speak for the franchise restaurants, but seriously doubt they were cutting up chicken (they were the only ones serving livers/gizzards, though)

A funny anecdote...one weekend I flew into Greensboro, NC to do the market over the weekend (2 days for Greensboro/High Point/Winston Salem/Raleigh/Durham as I recall). The first store I hit at about 10:30 am on Saturday had a feather in the wings (this was pretty uncommon--usually about once a month (you'd hit 300 stores in a month) you'd find one in a random wing). Procedure was to tape it to the evaluation form, and (as I recall) flunk the chicken (as they should have caught it in the breading/racking process). Later in the afternoon, a couple more locations had similar problems. As this was before cellphones, couldn't really get anyone's attention until 7 am Monday...ooops!!

[wnetmacman]

I do want to correct one thing---KFC has not cut chicken in store in at least 35 years

I did not know how long that had been happening, but I do know it was part of the quality change. I seem to remember somewhere seeing that after KFC was becoming more standardized, the Colonel himself was still stopping in at franchise locations where he referred to the gravy they made as "sludge". It's part of the expansion process to standardize, but something gets lost. That was part of the point of my post. Cutting chicken in the stores was one part. Freezing and shipping out dough for Pizza Hut is another. Yum forgets how each name grew in the first place forsaking customers for profits. I have a couple of local pizza places here that I prefer now over Pizza Hut, and definitely several chicken places for the same reason - they still hand make everything. Yes, I pay a bit more, but in the end, it's worth it.

[Romr123]

The quality faults which have tripped up KFC specifically have been associated with the cheapening/streamlining of the in-store preparation. Since I worked there in the late 80s, they have moved much more volume away from chicken on the bone. Nearly all of that comes into the restaurant pre-breaded and pre-seasoned, so it just has to be fried and served. Original Recipe--believe that they now bread the chicken differently than in the Colonel's day (instead of dipping in egg/milk that's incorporated in the breading and they dip in just water). Crispy--the shaking to create the flakes still is a thing. They try to incorporate mnemonics for the cooks to create uniformity for the chicken on the bone (eight shakes, two presses, etc etc etc; rack the chicken so it doesn't butt up against each other (creating "marriages" of uncooked breading), etc etc. Same reason why Starbucks shakes iced tea 10 times...helps the baristas rememeber.

35 years ago the norm was in-store made (from self rising flour/shortening/buttermilk) biscuits; they were enhanced away years ago to either canned or frozen biscuits. Back then, cole slaw in corporate stores (franchisees frequently had commissary-prepared slaw) was shredded in-store from whole cabbages in a Buffalo Chopper, then mixed with the dressing. There's been a lot of advances in pre-prepared produce since then, and it is likely still mixed (one bagful of slaw mix plus a pouch of dressing) in-store (the Buffalo Choppers were quite dangerous to use and the cross-contamination possibility was a big concern.

These step-wise diminishments of quality are a thousand cuts...making things just not so nice anymore.