KFC's feathers ruffled over rival's challenge

Everyone’s been buzzing about KFC’s coupon blunder, but the latest chatter on the topic has involved a much smaller chicken chain that doesn’t usually make headlines. In a series of savvy moves, rival El Pollo Loco took advantage of KFC’s mistakes and landed itself on the national media’s radar.

The coupon fiasco, along with KFC’s campaign touting their new grilled chicken offerings, inspired El Pollo Loco to challenge KFC. El Pollo Loco released ads and YouTube videos featuring CEO Steve Carley challenging KFC to a grilled chicken taste test—they even set up an 800 number for KFC to call and agree to the “Taste the Fire Challenge!” KFC didn’t call to accept the challenge, but according to El Pollo Loco, KFC employees and execs did call pretending to be consumers preferring the taste of KFC’s grilled chicken. I thought KFC’s response to El Pollo Loco’s claim was inadvertently hilarious: “we’ve been grilling our employees to see if anyone’s done any undercover dialing.”

Going one step further, El Pollo Loco posted a YouTube video named “What does KFC have against Moms?” As it turns out, the KFC coupons Oprah mentioned on her show were valid through May 19—except for Mother’s Day. El Pollo Loco’s YouTube clip mocked KFC and told consumers that El Pollo Loco would honor KFC’s coupons on Mother’s Day “just like we honor Moms”.

To add to KFC’s missteps, The Wall Street Journal reported that KFC spokesperson Rick Maynard explained that “KFC won’t honor free-meal coupons on May 10 because Mother’s Day is its busiest day of the year”. In that case, they should have had the promotion end prior to Mother’s Day in the first place. I can’t wait to see the next chapter in this chicken fight!