An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

KFC cus­tomers are pay­ing more from yes­ter­day, with Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd (PHL) in­creas­ing the prices of nine menu items by be­tween $1 and $4, which a rep­re­sents two to five per cent price change.

The new prices ap­ply to sev­er­al menu items, in­clud­ing the Mega meals, Munch Pack, Su­pa Deal, Big Deal, Crunch­er and Zinger sand­wich­es and their re­spec­tive com­bos.

The Mega 6 has moved from $119 to $122, while the Mega 8 in­creased from $155 to $159. The Mega 10 from $185 to $189 and the Mega 12 record­ed the largest in­crease, mov­ing from $209 to $219.

The Munch Pack is now $23.95, up from $22.95, while the Su­pa Deal in­creased from $29.95 to $30.95 and the Big Deal from $39.95 to $40.95.

The Crunch­er Sand­wich and Zinger Sand­wich have both moved from $29.95 to $30.95.

Their com­bos have al­so in­creased, with the Sand­wich Crunch­er Com­bo and Sand­wich Zinger Com­bo mov­ing from $39.95 to $41.95.

PHL chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Si­mon Hardy told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the com­pa­ny had de­lib­er­ate­ly avoid­ed an across-the-board in­crease, with ad­just­ments made to se­lect­ed prod­ucts.

Hardy said the nine items from KFC’s port­fo­lio of 30 core items had been tar­get­ed, with in­creas­es rang­ing from two to five per cent. The broad­er list of price changes, how­ev­er, in­cludes vari­a­tions of up to $10 on some of the Mega meals.

He ex­plained that the com­pa­ny had been ab­sorb­ing high­er in­put costs but had reached a point where it could no longer con­tin­ue do­ing so.

“The in­put costs have gone up,” Hardy said, point­ing specif­i­cal­ly to high­er chick­en costs and pres­sure on the price of hatch­ing eggs, which are used to pro­duce the birds.

“If the hatch­ing egg price goes up, then every­thing else goes up. We’ve been ab­sorb­ing those, but we couldn’t main­tain that.”

High­er costs as­so­ci­at­ed with ac­cess­ing for­eign ex­change have al­so con­tributed to the pres­sure.

Hardy said PHL had sought to take what he de­scribed as an “even ap­proach,” rather than pass­ing high­er costs on to cus­tomers across the en­tire menu.

“We have not done an across-the-board price in­crease. We’ve had to se­lect cer­tain items,” he said.

The lat­est ad­just­ment fol­lows KFC’s pre­vi­ous price in­crease in De­cem­ber 2025.

At the same time, the com­pa­ny has in­tro­duced a lim­it­ed-time of­fer aimed at cus­tomers seek­ing low­er-cost op­tions.

A two-piece snack pack is avail­able for $29.95 through KFC’s in-store kiosks. The pro­mo­tion is not avail­able through on­line or­der­ing.

Hardy said all KFC stores have kiosks and cus­tomers can place their or­ders us­ing the touch­screen ma­chines.

“We have in­tro­duced, for a lim­it­ed time on­ly, this best price deal, as I call it, the snack pack kiosk spe­cial at $29.95,” he said.

He said the of­fer was in­tend­ed to help cus­tomers man­age their spend­ing while still ac­cess­ing KFC prod­ucts.

Hardy de­clined to com­ment on whether the lat­est price in­crease had af­fect­ed KFC sales, not­ing that PHL’s pub­lic fi­nan­cial re­port­ing is done at the group lev­el rather than by in­di­vid­ual brand.

He al­so did not pre­dict the im­pact of the lat­est in­creas­es on de­mand.

“We’ll just have to see how peo­ple re­spond,” Hardy out­lined, adding that the com­pa­ny would con­tin­ue to fo­cus on of­fer­ing in­no­v­a­tive prod­ucts and val­ue.

The lat­est price ad­just­ments come against a back­drop of weak­er prof­itabil­i­ty for PHL, de­spite an in­crease in rev­enue.

For the six months end­ed May 31, 2026, prof­it at­trib­ut­able to share­hold­ers fell 45.7 per cent to $18.9 mil­lion, com­pared with $34.8 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

Rev­enue, how­ev­er, in­creased by 1.3 per cent to $716 mil­lion, up from $707 mil­lion in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od.

PHL chair­man Chris­t­ian Mout­tet point­ed to in­creased sup­pli­er costs, high­er Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions and for­eign ex­change con­straints as fac­tors that weighed on the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance.

He al­so cit­ed high­er for­eign ex­change costs in­curred in set­tling for­eign payables through al­ter­na­tive cur­ren­cies and cur­ren­cy swaps through the bank­ing sys­tem, at rates high­er than those used when the costs were orig­i­nal­ly cal­cu­lat­ed.

Mout­tet said PHL had im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures in­clud­ing al­ter­na­tive sup­ply chain op­tions, menu changes and ef­fi­cien­cy im­prove­ments to ad­dress the high­er costs.

The com­pa­ny ex­pects those mea­sures to sup­port its bot­tom-line per­for­mance as the fi­nan­cial year pro­gress­es.

Hardy said the com­pa­ny was mind­ful of the dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic con­di­tions fac­ing con­sumers and had sought to bal­ance af­ford­abil­i­ty with the ris­ing cost of do­ing busi­ness.

“We have sought to bal­ance the de­sire for peo­ple to be able to ac­cess the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of KFC and recog­nis­ing the tough eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion out there for our cus­tomers,” he said.

He de­scribed the ap­proach as “very mea­sured, ju­di­cious”, not­ing that the com­pa­ny had wait­ed un­til af­ter In­de­pen­dence Day to im­ple­ment the in­creas­es.