GE­SHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

As KFC cel­e­brates its gold­en an­niver­sary in T&T, this year the com­pa­ny spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian re­gard­ing its jour­ney, in­clud­ing chal­lenges and paving the way for­ward.

Since its es­tab­lish­ment in T&T 50 years ago, the fast-food com­pa­ny said it has sold “count­less” pieces of chick­en, not­ing that it con­tin­ues to part­ner with home-grown en­ti­ty Arawak as its provider.

KFC seems to rules the roost when it comes to serv­ing chick­en.

Op­er­at­ed by Yum! Restau­rants In­ter­na­tion­al (YRI), it is one of the world’s largest quick ser­vice restau­rant (QSR) chains with more than 15,500 restau­rants in more than 100 coun­tries.

How did KFC come in­to be­ing in T&T?

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, a group of in­vestors led by Ed­die Ahin, was at the time seek­ing in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and their re­search led them to YUM brands in Mi­a­mi.

YUM then vis­it­ed the Trinidad and the rest was his­to­ry.

On June 26, 1973, the fran­chise in Trinidad was born with its first out­let in St James.

That day, the com­pa­ny said scores of cus­tomers lined up on the pave­ments of 125 West­ern Main St James, wait­ing for their first taste of Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en.

Fast­for­ward to many years lat­er KFC T&T said it has main­tained its com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing ex­cit­ing new prod­ucts with Trin­bag­o­ni­ans in mind, which is the cor­ner­stone of its prod­uct in­no­va­tion fo­cus.

KFC is not on­ly known for its “Fin­ger Lickin Chick­en” but its sand­wich seg­ment al­so con­tin­ues to grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty.

In 1984, in keep­ing with KFC T&T’s man­date to con­stant­ly in­no­vate, the brand sought to mar­ry its chick­en sand­wich with its hot and spicy recipe.

The com­pa­ny said this was tar­get­ed at the grow­ing mar­ket for on-the-go prod­ucts, not­ing that the off­spring of this was the Zinger, which quick­ly be­came its most sought-af­ter sand­wich lo­cal­ly.

Years lat­er, the brand, which the com­pa­ny said is very da­ta and re­search fo­cused, dis­cov­ered that there was a sig­nif­i­cant seg­ment of cus­tomers who loved dark meat and want­ed to ac­cess on-the-go meals as well.

This con­sumer in­sight was the im­pe­tus for the de­sign of the Crunch­er Sand­wich.

Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, based on its suc­cess in T&T, these sand­wich­es were al­so launched across the globe and are fan favourites in mar­kets like the US, Mex­i­co, Colom­bia, Chile and Ja­maica just to name a few.

On whether more women were like­ly to buy sand­wich­es than men, KFC said it does not track sales by gen­der.

Fi­nances

The KFC fran­chise in T&T is held by Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd, which is pub­licly list­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change.

Asked what per­cent­age of the com­pa­ny’s rev­enue and prof­it be­fore tax in a to­tal year comes from KFC, Pres­tige Hold­ings said it could not dis­close that in­for­ma­tion be­cause it was “con­fi­den­tial.”

How­ev­er, it ad­mit­ted that dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, KFC was neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed, like all oth­ers in the QSR in­dus­try.

Two years lat­er, post COVID, the in­dus­try con­tin­ues to re­cu­per­ate.

Ship­ping costs glob­al­ly have al­so re­duced.

KFC was asked whether this could re­sult in it of­fer­ing low­er prices on the lo­cal mar­ket the com­pa­ny said, “While ship­ping costs have start­ed to de­cline, we still have not seen ma­te­r­i­al in re­duc­tions in raw ma­te­r­i­al prices.”

Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd record­ed a prof­it of $35.4 mil­lion last year turn­ing around a $28 mil­lion loss in 2021.

The group says the fi­nan­cial year 2022 was one of sig­nif­i­cant re­cov­ery com­pared to the two pre­vi­ous years, as rev­enue in­creased by 55 per cent to $1.1 bil­lion from $712 mil­lion in the pre­vi­ous year.

This re­sult­ed in a prof­it be­fore tax of $53.7 mil­lion com­pared to a loss be­fore tax of $31.7 mil­lion in 2021.

To cel­e­brate the 50th, KFC al­so opt­ed to award 50 $5,000 bur­saries, shared even­ly be­tween the stu­dents of UTT and UWI.

Al­so, KFC’s Gold­en Cup was the first sport­ing event spon­sored un­der the ban­ner of the 50th an­niver­sary.

This event was a T10 se­ries in the sec­ondary school crick­et league tar­get­ed at de­vel­op­ing up-and-com­ing crick­et tal­ent.

The win­ning school re­ceived $25,000 as its prize, while sec­ond and third place win­ners were award­ed $10,000 and $5,000 re­spec­tive­ly. All par­tic­i­pat­ing schools al­so re­ceived $1500 grants to­wards their crick­et teams needs.

KFC is al­so spon­sor­ing the TKR women’s and men’s teams for CPL 2023.

KFC T&T has the sta­tus of be­ing the high­est pen­e­trat­ed mar­ket per capi­ta, with 60 stores avail­able in the coun­try.

“We have the largest owned fast food de­liv­ery net­work and dri­ve through in the coun­try,” the com­pa­ny said, adding that it has con­stant­ly been up­dat­ing its stores to the new glob­al­ly rec­og­nized mod­ern de­signs.

The com­pa­ny added that it cur­rent­ly “has the high­est on­line con­ver­sion rates across all dig­i­tal plat­forms glob­al­ly. We are al­so the sec­ond largest Dig­i­tal Sales mar­ket in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.”

It not­ed how­ev­er, that cus­tomer ser­vice and full prod­uct avail­abil­i­ty con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge but it said it is cur­rent­ly im­ple­ment­ing new back of house sys­tems and train­ing pro­grammes to ad­dress these is­sues.

From an en­vi­ron­men­tal per­spec­tive, KFC T&T part­nered with Hike and Plant TT to plant 5,000 trees.

Not­ing that it has been con­sis­tent­ly de­vel­op­ing its dig­i­tal busi­ness and is now the leader in dig­i­tal sales in the Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean, the com­pa­ny al­so aims to con­vert all its sales to dig­i­tal sales by 2025 (all sales trans­act­ed via app, ecom­merce and oth­er dig­i­tal chan­nels) as it seeks to be num­ber one in the world per capi­ta for dig­i­tal sales.