Crazy Thursday, can you still afford it?

It's Thursday again. Has anyone sent you a message about KFC's Crazy Thursday V50? Although the Crazy Thursday meme is popular, many consumers are dissatisfied because the discounted products in the store are often sold out. Why does KFC use Crazy Thursday to attract customers while selling out the products? Let's take a look at the reasons.

1

It's Thursday, something crazy.

I met a friend yesterday and we talked for a long time. We were both a little hungry, so I asked him if he wanted to order some KFC together.

Unexpectedly, my friend got so angry that he jumped up from his wheelchair and shouted, "I'm V-ing your uncle 50, and I'll only eat McDonald's fried chicken from now on."

Frankly speaking, I don't understand.

I asked him why he was so angry, isn't it just some fried chicken?

He said KFC can't play tricks, pretending to give you a super discount on Thursdays, but when you get to the store, everything is sold out.

If you go at 11 o'clock, it is sold out. If you go at 12 o'clock, it is sold out. If you go at 5 or 6 in the afternoon, it is still sold out.

So you only have three chickens in stock nationwide, right?

Where's your chicken? I want to eat chicken.

It’s okay if it’s sold out, but your golden chicken nuggets for 19.9 yuan for 20 pieces are sold out, but the golden chicken nuggets for 25 yuan for 20 pieces next to it are available. Do you think I’m blind or stupid?

The more delicious hot spicy bone chicken and fried chicken were taken off the shelves just like that, leaving the 9.9 yuan starch chicken popcorn with a soft texture as the main product, and they still promote your pre-prepared rice porridge every day.

You update the menu all the time and take all the delicious food off the shelves. You took the tender beef and five-spice powder off the shelves, the Mexican chicken rolls off the shelves, the deep sea cod strips off the shelves, and you always want to take the finger-licking original chicken off the shelves, leaving only a lot of steamed buns, rice bowls, and rice porridge.

I come to the fried chicken shop and don’t eat the fried chicken that is high in oil, salt, fat and protein, but to eat your big plate of carbohydrates?

Where's your chicken? I want to eat chicken.

Is it that the steamed bun shop opposite is not cheap enough, or is it that the Auntie Dumplings next door is not local enough?

I can order takeout for pre-prepared meals and have them delivered, but why should I come to your fried chicken shop to eat a microwaved lunch?

I finally bought a delicious original chicken, but it tasted like it had been in the cupboard for centuries, the skin was soft and the meat was greasy.

With this kind of quality control, you can run a fast food chain?

It’s better to transform into a toy merchant and sell your linked Psyduck.

If you can't afford to play, then don't play. On one hand, you're going around going crazy on Thursdays to attract traffic, and on the other hand, you're selling out and making a fuss. You're just attracting traffic in vain.

Fried chicken shops should just make their fried chicken well.

After all the marketing all day long, there’s no chicken left. I might as well go eat Wallace.

At least you don’t have to take a car to go out.

Direct injection start and go home.

2

I was a little confused by his rant.

But after thinking about it carefully, it seems to make some sense.

The Crazy Thursday meme has been very popular in the past two years, but when you look at the financial reports, it turns out that everyone is just talking nonsense.

But I don't think KFC can't afford this. Fried chicken is not an expensive thing, so KFC won't be short of it.

The stores are out of touch.

A very simple question: Is the Crazy Thursday meme so contagious that it is now a conspiracy on the part of KFC officials?

Obviously, it can't, because it can't.

No matter which marketing guru you ask, he or she can only tell you that this plan "might be popular", because what kind of marketing the market likes is purely a matter of luck, and no one knows what it will turn out to be in the end.

Especially the concept of Crazy Thursday is not sophisticated. From the very beginning, it is full of the atmosphere of "get a wave and leave", and even seems like the kind of scheme that advertising companies use to make money from clients.

China Merchants Bank had a 50% discount on Wednesdays, Bank of Communications had the Red Friday, and AEON Supermarket had membership day on Tuesdays. In fact, KFC doesn’t have many days left to choose from.

It is just like those crazy brainwashing advertisements at that time, with a star madly repeating slogans such as "Crazy Thursday" and "Fried chicken 9.99" to the screen, trying to brainwash users.

The interesting thing is that this kind of low-level brainwashing advertisement has become a meme under the chaotic evolution of the Internet. Especially after the integration of the "V我50" meme, it has directly become a popular meme on the entire network with very strong vitality.

It’s probably similar to how in the past, at the end of every story people made up, they would ask which excavator was the best as a twist.

For KFC, the entire network is now paying attention to it. Although they don’t know what exactly happened, they now know that their luck has come.

Do you want to get off the stage? Do you want to play? Do you want to follow this trend?

Of course you will follow. You’d be a fool not to follow.

But the question is, is KFC ready to handle such a huge amount of traffic?

In other words, are the stores ready?

3

Is KFC not powerful enough? Or is KFC slow to react?

Neither.

Many people don’t realize that “KFC” and “KFC stores” are not the same thing.

KFC has many ideas, but this does not mean that these ideas can be implemented in stores in various business districts. Each store has its own business conditions and business ideas, and KFC has more than 8,000 stores across the country and is aiming for 10,000 stores.

Although every store has the same operating standards and internal regulations, a KFC in a county town is definitely different from a KFC in the core business district of a first-tier city.

The menus at the KFC I visit in Hangzhou are different from the KFC I visit when I go back to my mother-in-law’s hometown (Jiangsu).

The only thing some outlets have in common is that they are all called KFC.

From the overall perspective of KFC’s senior management, they are focusing on corporate growth, their own KPIs, and the overall situation.

We're definitely hoping for the wind to be as strong as possible on Crazy Thursday.

However, from the perspective of store execution, when conducting a promotion, the large amount of unstable customer flow will greatly increase the pressure of inventory management.

I was making so much money by following the routine, but suddenly you started all kinds of promotions and activities with me, attracting a large number of customers. My entire business idea was disrupted. The key point is, this thing doesn't make much profit in the end. Why bother?

It’s a bit like the feeling between the boss who makes the plans and the employees who execute them.

Employees are afraid that their boss will make trouble.

Especially KFC’s flagship product, the Finger-Licking Original Chicken, is a food that severely slaps KFC’s management rules in the face.

As a veteran fried chicken connoisseur who has been eating KFC for 20 years and weighs 200 pounds, I know that original chicken is different from other foods.

Look, Mixue Bingcheng also became very popular and suddenly became an Internet meme, so why was there no problem with their supply?

Because Mixue Bingcheng is a standard product, and there is no problem with the supply of most of KFC's products, including chicken wings, which are also standard products.

Only the [Finger Licking Original Chicken] is different.

This chicken is a bit complicated.

You can't just throw it into the oil pan and be done with it. It must be fried in a special fryer. It takes a long time to make, but the shelf life is very short. It will start to shrink and become soft in less than an hour after it is taken out, and must be thrown away after 90 minutes.

This kind of food with long processing time, short shelf life and high discard rate greatly increases the management pressure of KFC stores, because you have no way of predicting when and how much Finger-Licking Original Chicken you will need.

When there are many customers, frying it is a waste of time; when there are few customers, frying it is a waste of materials.

In the past, when we were dining in restaurants, the pressure was just great. But when the era of takeout arrived, the pressure began to explode.

Now add on the tide of Crazy Thursday. From the perspective of marketing and promotion, it’s too much. From the perspective of store supply management and operation, it’s exhausting.

KFC also knows about this and has even considered removing this food from its menu. It has also previously held a "Finger Licking Original Chicken VS Golden Crispy Chicken" campaign in an attempt to replace the Finger Licking Original Chicken, but has never been able to do so.

Because many people go to KFC just to eat the Original Chicken, if they can't get the Original Chicken, they would rather go to McDonald's.

So on the menu of Crazy Thursday, the finger-licking original chicken is a must-have item.

Eat, eat, eat, I want to eat chicken.

This makes it even more difficult for store managers, who have to deal with a large number of random customers who come every Thursday to try the original chicken.

If you fry them in advance, they may become deflated when customers arrive, which may lead to quality control problems and complaints.

If you fry it on the spot and keep the customers waiting for a long time, they will definitely become impatient and complain.

You can explode at any time, and the wasted costs at the end of the month can make your head explode.

It would be better for the store to sell out the items and drive away all these customers.

Maybe he'll order something else if the Crazy Thursday merchandise is sold out.

This is the store’s own survival wisdom.

At this time, it is even more uncomfortable from the consumer's perspective.

If you are a different store, it's none of my business. But if you are KFC, you have to provide me with corresponding services, give me a crazy 40% discount, give me finger-licking original chicken, and the chicken has to be delicious.

Otherwise, what activities are you doing?

I didn't give me fake money, you have to give me real chicken.

4

To put it bluntly, this is actually a problem of disconnection between headquarters marketing and terminal operations.

This kind of magic has happened more than once.

The headquarters has a good idea. When the terminal falls to the ground, its face hits the ground first and it cannot be caught.

For example, the previous Genshin Impact collaboration and the popularity of Psyduck were obviously very good marketing hotspots, but they were not seized upon. It seems that as long as the traffic is high, they will be overwhelmed, stuck or even crash.

It’s like the headquarters has “2077” and they force the Subor learning machines in the stores to run it.

Then you can only learn to be a machine master.

Of course, the reason behind this is not complicated. The reason why KFC has so many stores in so many different markets is that it can stick together entirely because of its strong management system, which allows each store to operate according to its own rules.

After investing these management costs, all stores can become standard KFCs, but they cannot change the different situations faced by the stores.

Almost every store will have some marginal violations to adapt to their own business conditions.

Because the consumers they face are different.

Most of the time they can stay within the bottom line and everyone maintains the standards.

But when there are very few or very many customers, this model of skirting the rules will fail.

Because management costs will exceed the limit, stores have only two options: crazy violation of regulations or continued loss.

Then all problems will erupt and overwhelm the entire management system.

Can KFC solve this problem?

If it could be solved, it should have been solved long ago. It cannot be solved if it is delayed until now.

This problem is common to the entire chain industry, not just KFC.

However, because Crazy Thursday was so popular, the huge amount of traffic directly rushed towards the moat built by KFC through management costs.

From a marketing perspective this is a good thing.

It's very difficult from an operational perspective.

Like what?

It's like an idol who is halfway through a plastic surgery suddenly gets the cosmic exposure he usually dreams of.

It's a good thing to be exposed, but now everyone can see the prosthesis on his face.

At this point, you enter a negative cycle. People play with your memes, go to your store, experience poor service, and your reputation drops. People continue to play with your memes, but because your reputation drops, they only play with your memes and don't go to your store to shop.

In the end, it became like this: everyone is having fun with the memes, but I just don’t buy it.

Traffic is a good thing, but traffic that cannot be consumed is no different from poison.

What’s even more magical is that this traffic did not come from KFC’s original idea, but from the entire Internet meme.

This is so magical.

V I'm 50, I'm full and I'll tell you in detail where the magic is.

Author: Qingsuan Banfo; Official Account: Banfoxianren

Original link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/gqdV_4TRtenSR4m5Q2AmMQ