China has been open to free markets and Western fast food chains for decades, and KFC was one of the first. For years, the brand carried a not very positive image (even using a slogan like “it’s not that bad” on the boxes of its products), but little by little they have been recovering. KFC belongs to YumChina, a holding company that is the largest restaurant operator in China and that also owns brands such as Taco Bell, carries Lavazza or Pizza Hut.
And the country’s star product is a pizza with an ingredient that gives off the smell of rotten eggs: durian.
The dumplings. Joey Wat is the CEO of YumChina and, recently, she gave an interview to Fortune in which she shared some of the most interesting details. One curious thing is that her son calls her “chicken-killer”, a nickname that has been hard-earned considering that KFC China kills 1 billion chickens every year.
Beyond the anecdote, the data is relevant if we take into account that China’s 1.4 billion inhabitants consume 8 billion chickens a year. The percentage that KFC contributes to that figure is considerable.
Market study. This change in trend for KFC that has occurred in recent years has a lot to do with the practices carried out by the market research and marketing team, but also with Wat itself. The reason? The management spends two or three hours every so often sitting in their restaurants observing what customers consume the most.
“When kids eat fried chicken, they serve it with mashed potatoes. Generation Z dips their chicken thighs in the garnish and then in the pot of gravy.” Knowing this, what Wat decided was that they had to get rid of the bone and, in addition, they launched a mashed potato burger with boneless chicken.
There are public places where durians are prohibited. The reason is an unpleasant odor, very strong and that can remain in the environment for days.
Bad pineapple pizza. But as we say, YumChina does not live on chicken alone. Pizza Hut is the other leg of the group’s table in the country, and this is where an ingredient that, at first glance, seems disgusting comes into play. In that observation routine, Wat realized that the pizza that was selling the most at that moment was not the Supremme (which is loaded with pepperoni, pork, beef, mushrooms, peppers and onions), but the durian with cheese.
It is a fruit native to Southeast Asia that is prohibited in some public spaces, but apparently drives Chinese consumers crazy. I haven’t tried it, but it looks like a spiked kiwi (or a large chestnut) and its smell is a mix of cheese, rotting meat, skunk, boiled eggs, onion, and raw sewage. However, the taste seems to be delicious, something that seems to have hacked the senses of Chinese consumers who love durian cheese pizza so much.
star product. Pizza Hut sold 30 million pizzas last year and the funny thing is that one in four was durian. There are many, many pizzas based on that smelly fruit that would disgust the most purist Neapolitan. And if it makes the leap to the West, it can be direct competition for pizza with pineapple.
In the end, this dominance of durian pizza in China is, as in the case of boneless chicken with mashed potatoes, the result of observation by the company’s senior management. And it seems to work.
Images | BorgQueen, مانفی, Missvain
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