KFC is the Coffee Time of the fried chicken chains, it's at the bottom of pyramid. It really should only be eaten as a last resort. The restaurants are often filthy dirty, the service is slow and horrible, and the food is just awful. I swear they cook the chicken and let it sit out for hours on end, then heat it up when someone orders it. I'm not sure how else they can get chicken so dry? It's truly is one of the worst fast food chains in the country. Years ago they weren't that bad, the one near me when i was growing up had line ups out the door. My family had a lot of good meals at KFC back in the day.
In respect of the dryness; I can tell you what's going on, you're pretty close.
They don't heat up the chicken a second time, they never let it cool.
Its cooked and then placed in a warming oven/drawer that keeps it in the food safe temperature range.
Sometimes (peak-meal time) enough stuff is moving that the product is relatively fresh; but often it can sit for quite awhile.
Keeping product that warm, for a long time, is bound to reduce moisture levels.
You can see the holding temperatures below in this inspection report from 2010:
Source:
https://www.quora.com/I-always-see-...n-Are-those-still-fried-or-oven-baked-already
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As to the rest, I must confess, I think the fries and gravy have been dreck most of my life, I don't really remember them ever tasting good, and the fries have been through a few
different incarnations too.
The Coleslaw is still dull, but at least its not neon-green pablum anymore.
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I don't think there's any secret to making better food.
1) Fresh is almost always better than frozen (applies to chicken, beef and french fries)
2) KISS rules matter, ie. Keep it streamlined stupid, Too many QSR places have too many things
on their menu. That drives up costs, (you have to store and refrigerate it all), it also increases the likihood of things being frozen/prepped off-site, because there simply isn't room
nor do staff have the training to execute a large menu.
3) Don't over salt
4) Don't aim to compete primarily on menu-size, as trying to please everyone usually means pleasing no one.
5) Don't aim to compete primarily on price, particularly if you have a product that is actually worth paying good money for....
6) Less volume, more margin.
To bring this thread back to its namesake;
Tim's lost their signature coffee blend to McDs. It wasn't that good, but it did have the virtue of being relatively inoffensive and familiar. They should have forked out the dough to keep what they had.
Tim's had perfectly good doughnuts (30 years ago) and they sought to compete on price and get into smaller store formats by eliminating baking, and using par-baked doughtnuts made in a factory in Brantford.
Unsurprisingly that produces a less appealing doughnut.
Where once they had a smaller product range, but arguably did it decently, they added a variety of new menu items but now do almost all of them badly.
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Also, the QSR industry (all of them) need to learn, thou shalt not store tomatoes in the fridge! That kills all the flavour.
en.wikipedia.org
