KFC may be down, but it wants you to know it’s not out.
The legacy fried chicken chain has faced slumping sales and increased competition, lagging behind its rivals in foot traffic and catching flak for being voted among the worst fast-food chicken chains.
The company’s new leadership team is digging in for a full-blown fried fowl revival with the launch of its “Kentucky Fried Comeback” campaign on July 14, which aims to reclaim KFC’s former fast-food fame.
“It feels like every competitor wants to be in the fried chicken space, including our sister brands. So it is the place to be,” Catherine Tan-Gillespie, president of KFC US, told Business Insider. “But, like many legacy and incumbent brands, we’ve kind of lost a bit of ground — we hadn’t lost our grit, but we had lost a bit of ground.”
Tan-Gillespie, a 10-year KFC veteran who previously served as its chief marketing officer and chief development officer, was named president of KFC US, effective April 1. Alongside the chain’s new CEO, Scott Mezvinsky, who was appointed to the role in January, Tan-Gillespie is aiming to rejuvenate the 72-year-old chicken chain.
In the first week of the comeback promotion, driven by a deal offering a free eight-piece meal with a $15 purchase, Tan-Gillespie said the company had seen “a record-breaking surge in KFC Rewards sign-ups and app downloads, plus unprecedented digital traffic,” including the chain’s “biggest week ever for digital sales and digital transactions.”
“This is just the beginning of our comeback,” Tan-Gillespie said. “And we couldn’t be more excited about what’s ahead.”
The ‘Kentucky Fried Comeback’
In total sales, KFC has, for more than a decade, trailed competitors like Chick-fil-A and Popeyes.
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In June, it lost its third-place footing to the relative newcomer Raising Cane’s, a 28-year-old chain that CNBC reported ballooned past $5.1 billion in sales in 2024. In the same period, the Colonel’s annual same-store sales decreased for the fifth quarter in a row.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index found that KFC also posted poor consumer satisfaction results, slipping 5% in 2024. Earlier this month, Yelp released a ranking of the top 20 chicken chains serving chicken sandwiches nationwide, and KFC came in 18th place among consumers. The legacy chain didn’t break the top 5 in any region across the US.
The chicken chain’s first phase of its comeback plan features a new addition — fried pickles — to its expansive menu, which currently includes buckets, bowls, and combo meals of its fried chicken, as well as adjacent offerings like pot pies, waffles, tenders, nuggets, and sandwiches. While the chain bets on new menu innovations, it’s also pushing a nostalgic vibe, with a resurgence of the chain’s figurehead, the Colonel, in marketing materials.
Matty Matheson, the Canadian celebrity chef known for his role in the acclaimed Hulu series “The Bear,” will likewise star in a series of ads promoting the fried chicken chain.
Though Matheson is a burgeoning icon for Gen Z fans, Tan-Gillespie said his work as a spokesperson isn’t about bridging a generational divide among KFC’s consumers. “We don’t tend to think too much in sort of ages, I think we’re a brand for everybody,” she said. Instead, Matheson “was just a perfect pairing” for the brand.
Though details have yet to be formally announced, Tan-Gillespie said to expect a series of forthcoming renovations to KFC’s restaurants, which will give the chain a physical facelift to support its reinvigorated brand identity.
“It may not be exactly super, super sexy, but it’s very simple: it’s listening to what our customers want and giving it to them,” Tan-Gillespie told BI.
A promising strategy — if it’s played right
R.J. Hottovy, head of analytical research at the location intelligence and foot traffic data software firm, Placer.ai, told Business Insider that the menu changes, free chicken promotion, and the new marketing campaign should help boost brand awareness in the short term, but it’s a long road for KFC to restore its place in the chicken chain pecking order.
“The category remains fiercely competitive, and a true comeback will ultimately require more substantial enhancements to its menu, marketing, and real estate strategies,” Hottovy said.
Placer.ai data recorded during the week of July 14 — which marked the launch of the comeback campaign — showed foot traffic at KFC locations nationwide down 0.1% compared to last year. While still a dip, that’s a marked improvement from the week prior, when visits were down 2.7% year-over-year, suggesting the turnaround might just be starting to sizzle.
Michael Della Penna, the chief strategy officer of the digital advertising and real-time marketing firm InMarket told Business Insider that KFC’s relaunch, which builds on initiatives the brand has been promoting over the last year, is “doing a couple of things really right.”
The chain recently relaunched its 2000-era meal deals — rightly, Della Penna said, since combo meals are proven to be successful in terms of driving purchases — and new sauce-forward chicken tenders capitalize on “the hot and spicy craze” popularized by Gen Z, broadening KFC’s appeal to younger audiences.
Matthew Barry, Euromonitor International’s Global Insight Manager of Food, Cooking, and Meals, told Business Insider that loyalty programs are a big incentive for customers, making it a good move by KFC to lean in.
“That locks customers in to get to those values,” Barry said. “And that does not necessarily mean the cheapest thing. When I go out in this climate and I spend the money, the question is: Am I getting value for it? Because if I’m going to go out, it’s got to be worth it for me.”
With consumers more price-conscious and with more options than ever, KFC has to ensure it is attractive to the broadest possible audience while maintaining the reputation that helped grow it to over 30,000 restaurants around the world, Usha Haley, chair in international business and professor of management at the Barton School of Business at Wichita State University, told Business Insider.
“Brands need to maintain their legacy image while simultaneously appealing to a younger audience,” Haley said.”Tread carefully is the advice I give.”