PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER
pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter an un­planned de­lay of more than two months, Pres­tige Hold­ings fi­nal­ly had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to open its 60th Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en restau­rant at Xtra Plaza, Guia­co, San­gre Grande.

CEO Si­mon Hardy said the restau­rant was set to be open in April, but Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment that restau­rants would be shut down as a COVID-19 pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure put the launch on pause.

“This store was ac­tu­al­ly planned to open be­fore the shut down. We were about two days from open­ing it when we had the sur­prise shut down at the end of April,” said Hardy, who ex­pect­ed the new restau­rant to be a suc­cess giv­en the brand’s pop­u­lar­i­ty over the years.

“KFC is a very strong brand in Trinidad and To­ba­go and it has been here over 45 years now,” said Hardy.

KFC in a so­cial me­dia state­ment on the open­ing of the restau­rant, al­so not­ed that the suc­cess of brand in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Ex­pand­ing op­er­a­tions cre­ates even more ca­reer op­por­tu­ni­ties in the fast food in­dus­try and shows the con­fi­dence the brand has in the lo­cal econ­o­my. This open­ing re­in­forces KFC Trinidad & To­ba­go as the world’s most pen­e­trat­ed KFC mar­ket,” the restau­rant chain said in the re­lease.

De­spite their pop­u­lar­i­ty Hardy said there were no plans to open an­oth­er KFC restau­rant this year.

“We have no plans to open any new KFC  out­lets this year in terms of de­vel­op­ment. Ob­vi­ous­ly if de­vel­op­ments come on board, if it makes sense, we will con­tin­ue and mon­i­tor,” said Hardy, who how­ev­er not­ed that that an­oth­er pop­u­lar fran­chise un­der the Pres­tige um­brel­la - Star­bucks - would see ex­pan­sion.

“ Across our oth­er brands apart from KFC, Star­bucks is al­so adding stores. We added an­oth­er one in Gulf View in Feb­ru­ary and next month we ex­pect to open one in Shops of Trinci­ty,” said Hardy, who al­so ex­plained that plans for a Grand Bazaar branch was al­so be­ing con­sid­ered.

KFC ac­knowl­edged that pa­trons will not be able to dine in at the “a sleek new mod­ern “R.E.D.” de­sign” of the new restau­rant but “ pa­trons of this restau­rant can ex­pect the same de­li­cious, mouth­wa­ter­ing chick­en via take­away, dri­ve-thru, curb­side pick­up, home de­liv­ery by call­ing or or­der­ing in the app.”

The restau­rant chain con­tin­ued, “The man­age­ment and staff of KFC re­minds the pub­lic that Covid-19 pro­to­cols are be­ing ad­hered to at this as well as all lo­ca­tions na­tion­wide and we wish to thank all our loy­al cus­tomers for their pa­tron­age.”