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A new KFC restaurant in McKinney, Texas, is about much more than the debut of a new design.
“It’s the return of Kentucky Fried brought to life in one restaurant,” KFC U.S. President Catherine Tan-Gillespie told Fox News Digital.
The restaurant, called Open House, serves as a testing ground to see how the 75-year-old fast-food chain, founded by Col. Harland Sanders, could modernize without abandoning what made it famous.
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KFC’s challenge isn’t necessarily getting Americans to remember the brand. This makes them think about it when deciding what to eat today.
“There is enormous love for this American icon,” Tan-Gillespie said. But in the United States, she added, “we tend to think of us in people’s memories. In reality, we don’t think of us at mealtimes today.”
KFC Open House is a prototype restaurant located in McKinney, Texas. (KFC)
This tension between nostalgia and relevance helped shape the open house. In developing the restaurant, KFC started with a question.
“We sat down and said, you know, if the colonel built a restaurant from scratch today, what would it look like?” » said Tan-Gillespie.
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The answer incorporates Art Deco and Mid-Century Modern influences, as well as large glass windows, digital ordering and drive-thru technology. At the same time, the restaurant offers lobby hosts, table service, booths and outdoor dining designed to encourage guests to gather.
“For me, the philosophy is that we need to be digital where it helps, but human where it matters,” Tan-Gillespie said.
The new restaurant (not pictured) will experiment with expanded hours and a breakfast offering. (Moïse Robinson/Getty Images for KFC)
The menu follows a similar philosophy: retaining KFC’s most recognizable products while experimenting with how customers want to eat chicken now, Tan-Gillespie said.
The chain’s buckets and original recipe remain central, but Open House is expanding to tenders, wings, sandwiches, wraps and nuggets, as well as new sauces, drinks, snacks, candies and sides.
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Breakfast is also part of the experience. The open house is expected to run from 6 a.m. to midnight, giving KFC an opportunity to test breakfast and evening meals that have not traditionally been a significant part of its U.S. business.
KFC’s open house will still feature staples like the chain’s original fried chicken recipe, but the expanded menu will also include tenders, wings, sandwiches, wraps and nuggets. (Scott Eisen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“We’ll see if these shoulder days work commercially for us and work for guests, work for our team members,” Tan-Gillespie said. “If they don’t, we’ll scale them back. And if they do, then we can look at expanding them nationally.”
“I think what should change is making sure that we’re expanding the ways that customers want to eat fried chicken today.”
KFC also chose McKinney with scalability in mind. Tan-Gillespie described the Dallas-Fort Worth area as a competitive and fast-growing restaurant market, while McKinney offers a mix of existing KFC customers and consumers the chain hopes to attract. The suburban setting also gives KFC a test that could potentially translate to similar markets elsewhere.
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But even as KFC experiments with new formats, flavors, technologies and time slots, Tan-Gillespie said some parts of the brand aren’t worth reinventing.
The KFC president told Fox News Digital that the new restaurant concept was shaped by Colonel Sanders’ philosophy. (Bob Grannis/Getty Images)
“Buckets of fried chicken according to the original recipe should not change,” she said. “I think what should change is making sure that we’re expanding the ways that customers want to eat fried chicken today.”
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And what would Sanders think of this balance between the KFC he created and the one the company is trying to build?
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“I think he would feel really proud, actually,” Tan-Gillespie said. “I think he would say, ‘That sounds like me. That sounds like what I was trying to do.’ But for today.”
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