KFC’s plan to catch up in the fried chicken wars? Ditch the bones

UNITED STATES – Fried chicken is making American restaurants more money than ever, except at KFC – the very place that pioneered selling it by the bucket load across the country.

Chick-fil-A fans swarm to its sandwiches and milkshakes, Popeyes’ launches go viral on social media, Raising Cane’s is drawing diners with its yellow Labrador mascot and 2.3 million TikTok followers, and McDonald’s now sells about as much chicken as it does beef.

But KFC? “Invisible” and “irrelevant,” according to one of its leaders. It was the only major chicken chain where sales fell in 2024.

“We used to be an American icon,” KFC US president Catherine Tan-Gillespie said in an interview. “Somewhere along the way, we stopped acting like one.”

The problem for KFC, owned by Yum! Brands Inc, is in its bones. The 73-year-old brand’s focus on bone-in chicken – like its iconic red-and-white-striped bucket of fried drumsticks – has left it flailing among younger customers, who are obsessed with boneless white meat. 

Since 2020, the amount of bone-in chicken sold at stores has fallen by 4 per cent, while boneless is up 11 per cent, according to data by market research firm Circana.

KFC is now looking to boost its business by dropping the price of its chicken sandwich to US$3.99 (S$5.20) from US$5.49, despite an increase in the price of wholesale chicken. 

It has also brought back its famous Colonel Sanders character – based on KFC’s founder – for advertisements alongside celebrity chef and The Bear (2022 to present) actor Matty Matheson.

It is hoping the changes will help it regain a spot among the top three US chicken chains, after data from Technomic, which provides insights on food service and customer trends, showed it falling behind Raising Cane’s in 2024. 

Going back in time is part of the plan. KFC has already tapped the resurgence of trends from the Y2K era by bringing back honey BBQ sauce and potato wedges, both staples of its 1990s menu.

Less likely to be captured by the trip down memory lane are Gen Zs, who are the most frequent visitors to fast-food restaurants in general, but were just 6 per cent of KFC’s customer base through July, according to consumer data provider Numerator. When they eat at chicken chains, they favour tenders and nuggets – the boneless options that make up just a quarter of KFC’s menu. 

KFC is working on updating its core menu to better reflect consumer tastes, said Ms Tan-Gillespie, without sharing details.

The chain did briefly introduce what it called its “first new bucket in nearly a decade” during the March Madness basketball tournaments: a US$7 meal that included tenders, mashed potato poppers and gravy dipping sauce. 

This is not the first time KFC has tried a boneless identity shift. In 2013, the company ran a series of advertisements where customers chowed through a bucket of KFC, then freaked out – with increasing levels of intensity – that they had eaten the bones. The reveal: They were eating the brand’s new pieces of boneless chicken.

Though the launch did well during its three-month run, it did not stick around. It was “perhaps a little ahead of its time”, in terms of what consumers wanted at the time, said Ms Tan-Gillespie.

Whether the strategy succeeds this time around will be a key test for Mr Chris Turner, the new chief executive of Yum! Brands, and his revamped KFC leadership team. Do they leave behind the bones to chase trends, potentially alienating existing customers in the process and with no guarantee they will be able to push back into an increasingly crowded market? 

Ms Tan-Gillespie declined to give details of Yum! Brands’ plans for investing in KFC US, but said there are some “really positive things happening on that front”.

A spin-off concept called Saucy by KFC, which focuses on chicken tenders with a lengthy list of dipping sauces, opened a single location in Orlando, Florida, in 2024, with several more coming before the end of 2025.

On Yum! Brands’ last earnings call, outgoing CEO David Gibbs said a third of customers at the new store were under 30 years old. The company is due to report third-quarter earnings on Nov 4. BLOOMBERG