A much-loved purveyor of greased bird parts puts out a tender for its distribution and chooses – hello! – a lowest-offer boxshifter with no experience of moving soggy poultry. On day one, less than a third of the chain’s high street obesity farms receives its order of reformulated hen lumps.
This goes on for days. The British public panics and swamps the police with calls for justice. The fuzz point out, with some justification, that dealing with salt-fed chicken scarcity or Zinger-related disgruntlement is not high on their list of priorities. Meanwhile breasts and thighs go pale and sweaty in the backs of vans. Charities can’t take them, because hunger doesn’t kill people, chickens do. A lot of chopped chook gets chucked. Farmers and franchisees – small family businesses – bear the brunt.
The media loves it and schedules are cleared for minute-by-minute updates from the KF-cene of the crime. Slack-jawed Boneless Banquet gobblers, their pasty faces already de-scaling as withdrawal takes hold, line up to announce, wattles a-wobble, that this denial of their usual fat-stacked BucketFeast is dangerously prolonging their lives. Social media goes into meltdown with You Had One Job memes exploding servers across the country. KFC joins the laughter with a ‘We’re shit aren’t we?” shrug.
For some this is an early glimpse of the post-apoplectic world we’ll live in after Brexit, where nothing works and no one cares. For others its proof of the end of capitalism, the final yards of a race to the bottom, where profiteers strip every last morsel of stringy wet flesh off the bones of commerce. And for some it’s just a whimsical caprice of fat that taps into the nation’s abiding love of a good old British failure.
Are we going to hell in a bargain bucket?
SteveT says
Except that the company employed to handle their distribution arrangements are German.
Its an EU plot I tell you.
Moose the Mooche says
For you Englander, zer fest food iss over.
Martin Hairnet says
What this story needs is a used sticking plaster from some chlorinated baths.
Billybob Dylan says
Did you know it’s illegal to remove a sticking plaster in public in Canada?
Mike_H says
I didn’t.
But, Canadadians are such a strange lot..
Ahh_Bisto says
The GMB Union’s comments on the change of distributor from BidVest to DHL are interesting. They claim to have warned KFC weeks ago about the problems of moving from a food distribution specialist to one with Keine F**king Clue in DHL simply to save money. It’s telling that DHL’s managing director of retail’s statement on the unfolding problems included the mealy mouthed words:
“unforeseen interruption of this complex service”.
I find it hard to believe that any of this was unforeseeable and that the only reason why DHL now realise the service is complex is because they didn’t do their homework on the logistics of shifting a food product with a limited shelf life to 900 outlets.
It’ll be interesting to see what comeback the outlets have to the KFC controlling group as outlets are all franchises. It’s claimed in some quarters that KFC will lose £4.2M per week which equates to around £4600 per outlet.
Leicester Bangs says
It’s weird how important KFC is to people. Like if I went to KFC and it was shut, I’d just go somewhere else, another fried chicken place — there are plenty about. Or maybe I’d have a pizza that day.
That’s people for you, though. They’re crazy!
David Kendal says
The reports about the police being deluged by calls about KFC are based on tweets from the forces in London and Manchester. The BBC, possibly uniquely, reports that “neither force could confirm if it had received calls.” The fact that this part of the story has been endlessly repeated across a lot of the rest of the media with no hard evidence maybe does symbolise – well, something.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-43140836
Ahh_Bisto says
I pity the chickens in all this.
They’re always at the bottom of the pecking order.
Moose the Mooche says
I pity the coop.
Iiiiiiii pity the coop.
Ahh_Bisto says
Wha?
The Co-op’s also run out of chicken?
SteveT says
Having worked in logistics all my working life I am not at all surprised that DHL have failed miserably. They are a Juggernaut Logistics company without any Juggernauts.
They most likely had no idea of the complexity of the operation and have just gone in with a ridiculous rate – it is how they operate. Their senior management make our govt look like the most competent people around.
Moose the Mooche says
Greased bird parts…. hurrrrrrr
chiz says
oh Moose…. “breasts and thighs go pale and sweaty in the backs of vans” was the line for you
Moose the Mooche says
Too obvious. I’m not a slag.
No. Wait. I am.
Lando Cakes says
If only the public sector could operate with the effectiveness and efficiency of private enterprise. Just think, our schools and hospitals could be like this too.
Billybob Dylan says
While I’m reading this post Steve Lamacq just played The Bees’ “Chicken Payback.”
Hmmm…
Dave Ross says
There’s a brilliant clip out there which answers all the questions you need to know about Britain in the 21st Century. A woman leaning out of her car window explaining to a reporter….. “I had to go to Burger King” in a voice that sounds like she’s been denied life saving surgery…….
By the way brilliantly written as always @chiz “K F Cene of the crime….”
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/irate-woman-rants-ive-had-to-go-to-burger-king-amid-kfc-shortage-in-hilarious-itv-news-clip-gone-a3771921.html
Black Celebration says
I think there’s a “colonel” (!!!) of truth in your OP Chiz as a commentary on Broken Britain, the sick old man of Europe sitting in the corner of Wetherspoons, silently nursing his one pint for the entire afternoon until Countdown comes on.
The vast, vast majority of people faced with the KFC crisis will shrug and go somewhere else. But there’s a story to be had here – and by golly the media are going to escalate this to be a national crisis and also insult the public. Why? Because we love it. We are treacherous and disloyal as a nation and this kind of thing appeals to us more than anything.
The reporter spends all day talking to mostly disinterested people – you just need to find one (preferably fat) working class person. In the filmed piece, isolate the answer from the question, and there you have your spokesperson for the working classes saying, “I’ll have to go to Burger King now!” .
A few million watch the news and say “What a fat bastard! Perhaps if these people spent more time working/exercising, we wouldn’t have an obesity problem!”
Mike_H says
Only the middle-class watchers will get any further than thinking “What a fat bastard!” and onto “The Obesity Problem”, believe me.
Uncle Wheaty says
A complete non news story.
Change of distributor has teething problems…who knew!