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KFC's monster-sized miniature weekend media score

December 18, 2017 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

It’s just a tiny story, but KFC made big news with the opening of its Portland, Oregon, mini restaurant Saturday, which now has managed to generate stories across the globe from major news outlets. Of course, we are talking about a mini-restaurant, so it had a mini life and is already closed, but not without first managing to make a huge impression in its short existence. 

The sidewalk-sized location on a street corner in Portland drew fans who lined up for a palm-sized $5 Fill Up box that actually was free, and boasted a mini mashed potato serving, a fried chicken thigh and drumstick, as well as a nearly a biscuit, cookie and drink. 

U.S. Advertising Director George Felix told news media it was just a continuation of the brand’s offbeat approach to promotion and search for new ways to generate "unique" customer experiences. Felix — among the masterminds behind the revolving cast of celebrity colonelsand other unusual promotional feats for the brand — is one of the keynote speakers at this April’s Restaurant Franchising and Innovation Summit in Louisville. 

The brand has also even had a popular mini-cooking video to show customers how to actually bread and fry a mini-drumstick and thigh. Manual dexterity appears to be a big plus in that realm. 

But for the brand itself, chalk up another worldwide free press score for this relatively low-budget, millennial-magnetizing promotion that is likely leaving a lot of competing QSR brands feeling a disproportionately big amount of miniature envy this week. At QSRweb, however, we're pretty impressed, though we feel KFC might have really missed the boat in not staging this whole weekend event in ... "Minnie-apolis."  (Sorry.) 

About S.A. Whitehead

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Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.