KFC: Our New Store Is Different To McDonald’s Hipster Café

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KFC have opened a new concept store in Sydney’s Parramatta aimed solely at an adult customer base. the menu’s been trimmed, kid’s meals gone, while the outlet is currently awaiting approval on a liquor license.

The concept with chicken follows McDonald’s hipster-esque café called The Corner that opened in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Camperdown in late December. Gone were the traditional Maccas uniforms as staff donned chambray shirts and dark jeans.

Only a tiny McCafe logo on the takeaway bags could be found in the café, according to The Guardian. “The logo is minuscule on the sign outside, which in black lettering on a white background proclaims The Corner.”

However KFC’s chief marketing and development officer, Nikki Lawson, is adamant its new store will be clearly KFC.“The store is KFC, it’s not something else,” she said.

“The KFC branding is front and centre. For us, it’s more a location strategy than a different brand.

“I don’t know exactly what the McDonald’s one was built around but it feels like a different brand for me when I look at it and ours is fundamentally not.”

The new store was created to target adult workers in the larger employment hubs. The fast food brand is already all over the suburban and city areas, said Lawson, but penetration in the urban parts of Australia was more scarce.

“We’ve been looking for a model that can work specifically in those kinds of more urban locations for us,” explained Lawson. Parramatta was the perfect fit for them.

The store is targeted completely towards working adults and not families. “What we’re hoping that will do is broaden perceptions of the brand and broaden the reach of the brand,” explained Lawson.

The menu has been altered and skinnied down, mainly because retail real estate in urban areas is more expensive, said Lawson. If KFC doesn’t have as many things on the menu they don’t need as big a space for cooking said menu items.

She added: “We’ve got no family meals on there, we’ve got no kids meals on there, we haven’t got our beverages on there, a lot of our snacking products aren’t on there, so it’s skinnied down the menu so that the real estate we take up is less.”

Fingers are crossed around the KFC office that this will be the first of many, but the team are seeing how the trial goes first.

“This is the first one and I’m sure we’ll learn a lot from it. Whether it will be exactly what’s rolled out or whether we find there’s no market for it, we’ll figure that out from the store,” said Lawson.

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