PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

KFC cus­tomers found an ad­di­tion­al charge on their bills to­day, when the pop­u­lar fast-food chain start­ed charg­ing for condi­ments with their meals.

The fast-food chain start­ed charg­ing $2 for three pack­ets of ketchup or mus­tard and one pack­et of pep­per in ad­di­tion to the reg­u­lar cost of its com­bo meal.

Sev­er­al cus­tomers took to so­cial me­dia com­plain­ing of the charge af­ter mak­ing the dis­cov­ery on the re­ceipts.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Pres­tige Hold­ing Si­mon Hardy said the de­ci­sion to charge for condi­ments was borne out of the nu­mer­ous price in­creas­es as a re­sult of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic which the fran­chise had ab­sorbed.

"The cost of oil has gone up 65 per cent. We are Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en and of course, the cost of pack­ag­ing has gone up, the cost of chick­en has gone up, the cost of our drinks has gone up. So every­thing is go­ing up. And a lot of this is dri­ven by the COVID dis­rup­tion to the glob­al sup­ply chain," Hardy said.

Hardy said the re­cent in­va­sion of Ukraine by Rus­sia has cre­at­ed more com­pli­ca­tions along the sup­ply chain, push­ing up costs even more and leav­ing the fran­chise with no choice but to look at ad­just­ments

"We ac­knowl­edge it is a ma­jor de­par­ture from our pre­vi­ous poli­cies but we are in very dif­fer­ent times and oth­er than every­body pay­ing more for their  KFC meals we took this ap­proach to try and mit­i­gate the cost in­creas­es that we would oth­er­wise have to do. That is the sim­ple maths of it," said Hardy, who con­firmed no oth­er Pres­tige fran­chise has made such a change as yet.