It’s Clear Why KFC Is Struggling To Keep Its Doors Open

We wouldn’t blame you for thinking that KFC is doing just fine. On the face of things, the world’s most famous fried chicken brand is still absolutely everywhere, with well over 30,000 restaurants in operation worldwide and a brand value of approximately 6.7 billion dollars in 2024, according to Statista. Given that this value was up on the previous year, it kinda seems like the sky’s the limit for Kentucky Fried Chicken. However, if you peek under that fried chicken skin (sorry, we know it’s a gross image, but we couldn’t resist), you’ll find a restaurant chain in crisis. KFC has had a rocky few years, with restaurants suddenly closing their doors and competitors in the fried chicken space threatening the very soul of this iconic brand.

That’s if its soul is still alive and kicking, that is. In recent years KFC has seen a noticeable decline in quality and service standards, with customers pointing out that it’s a shadow of its former self (and which could indicate that it’s struggling). As well as this, its sheer identity as being Kentucky’s finest export has started to change, with the company upping sticks and moving its headquarters to Texas in a bid to save money. KFC may be seeing some exciting changes in 2025 — but it’s also in freefall, and we think we know why.

Read more: 4 Chain Restaurants With The Absolute Best Chicken Pot Pie And 4 With The Worst

Perhaps the biggest sign of a restaurant struggling to keep its doors open is when those very doors start to shut. Unfortunately, for KFC, that’s been happening pretty quickly. In the summer of 2024, several dozen KFC branches closed without prior warning across Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. The closures were accompanied by a brief, cryptic message from KFC which seemed to lay the blame on EYM Chicken, the franchisee that owned and operated the restaurants. EYM Chicken’s sibling company, EYM Pizza, had filed for bankruptcy protection shortly before shutting up shop on the KFC branches.

Now, it’s easy to see that EYM Chicken was in trouble here, but that doesn’t account for closures of KFC restaurants elsewhere. In the UK, 13 KFC restaurants shut their doors in 2024, again pretty suddenly, leaving fans of its chicken heartbroken. This was once more pinned down to a franchising issue and stores changing hands between companies, but you do have to ask yourself why so many of these franchises are struggling — and if there’s a wider problem at play with KFC itself.

Virtually everyone knows that KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken. So you can reasonably assume that the restaurant chain not only has strong roots in Kentucky, but continues to operate out of the state, right? Well, that’s soon not going to be the case. In February 2025, KFC announced that it was to be moving its headquarters from Kentucky to Texas, with the brand joining the other Yum! Brands favorite Pizza Hut, which is operated out of the state. In doing so, it would also relocate its core employees.

Yum! Brands’ chief executive officer David Gibbs stated that “these changes position us for sustainable growth and will help us better serve our customers, employees, franchisees and shareholders,” as seen in The Guardian. However, the move has faced a lot of criticism, with Kentucky’s governor even wading in to express that he thinks it’s a bad look for KFC. So why are they moving the KFC headquarters in the first place? Tax. Texas has low corporate taxes, allowing businesses to thrive more effectively there. You have to ask yourself, though, whether KFC would be making such a bold move and selling out its very identity if it wasn’t concerned about cash flow and surviving into the future.

Although the overall picture for KFC has looked pretty good on paper over the last few years, it’s worth taking a look at some of its most recent sales information. In a Q4 earnings report for 2024, it was revealed to investors and the public alike that KFC’s sales in the U.S. had been on the decline by a substantial 5% from Q3. This downturn was chalked up to KFC facing stiff competition towards the end of the year from Popeyes, which has quickly become a force to be reckoned with (and KFC’s biggest rival in the fried chicken market).

Furthermore, this decline was building on previous declines in sales from the quarters throughout 2024, signalling long-term trouble for KFC. This drop in sales is particularly stark when you look at how Yum! Brands’ other restaurants have been performing. Taco Bell’s U.S. sales were up 5% for Q4, while its worldwide sales were up too. KFC’s worldwide sales have also been on the increase, especially in China, but in the United States things aren’t looking so great. Plus, the broader picture for Yum! Brands could be better — while shares have increased by 11%, this was half of what the broader growth of the S&P 500 was in 2024. These may seem like small numbers, but they’re pretty significant.

As a franchised restaurant, when your franchisees are in trouble, you’re in trouble. Unfortunately, franchising woes have been hitting KFC pretty hard in the last 12 months or so, and this could be putting a dent in the long-term prospects of the restaurant staying prominent. In late 2024, its biggest domestic franchisee KBP Brands announced that it was laying off more than two dozen corporate employees. The redundancies were announced as part of what KBP Foods called a restructure, and apparently came as a result of the company responding to the challenging current economy and inflation.

Thankfully, KBP Foods managed to keep the majority of its employees across its entire business, but it lost 9% of its corporate team in total. Now, crucially, this isn’t a decision made by KFC itself, but it does indicate that there might be some discontent brewing. Franchisees rely on the businesses they franchise to remain appealing to customers to stay in business, and if people are falling out of love with KFC itself, there’s not a lot they can do. It might be a sign for KFC to think about how it can draw people back into its stores.

KFC is a truly international franchise, with the quick service chain operating in more than 145 countries around the world. As such, it relies on its partnerships and franchisees in all of these countries to remain strong if it’s going to keep selling its chicken — and it doesn’t seem like that’s the case recently. In February 2025, it was announced that IS Gida, Turkey’s franchise operator for KFC, had filed for bankruptcy, putting thousands of jobs on the line and resulting in hundreds of closures of KFC branches around the country.

The bankruptcy claim came shortly after Yum! Brands severed all its ties with IS Gida, having claimed that it wasn’t operating at the standards expected by the KFC owners. Although Yum! Brands said in a statement that it was committed to keeping KFC alive and well in Turkey, and reopening its restaurants in the country as soon as possible, it didn’t give any indication of its short-term future. Given that Turkey has an approximate population of 87 million people, it’s a massive market for the brand not to be operating in, and this will no doubt be reflected in its profits.

You know how we know why KFC is struggling to stay in business? Because everything’s so darn expensive these days — and this formerly affordable restaurant just hasn’t been able to keep up. As a result, it seems that it’s jacked up its prices by a pretty wild amount, turning what should be an affordable meal into something that burns a hole in your wallet. In the last few years, customers have seen their meals increase by around 30 to 40%, with simple meals like a three-piece tenders combo coming in at almost $15 dollars before tax in some stores.

Of course, this isn’t entirely KFC’s fault; things have gotten way more expensive in the last couple years, and the pandemic and subsequent cost of living crisis made chicken a lot pricier for the chain. As a result, inevitably it had to pass the cost onto its core customer base, but the amount that it’s done so has made it clear how much it’s struggling. This isn’t just a U.S.-specific problem, either. In the UK, KFC prices have gone through the roof, with customers noticing that the correlation between how much they pay and how much chicken they actually get is way off.

Restaurants rely on people to like not just their food, but their image. However, when fast food chains start to make questionable decisions about how they’re marketing their meals, it’s amazing how quickly people turn away from them, harming their profits in the process. This cause and effect can partly be seen in KFC’s recent sales struggles, which can somewhat be pinned down to some bizarre marketing decisions in recent years. For example, one ad in 2024 harnessed the power of AI to create a series of terrifying multi-fingered hands, with the idea being that the more digits you have, the more fingers you have to lick after eating its chicken. The problem was that people hated the concept and just found the whole thing creepy.

Another ad in 2023 was roundly criticized for playing into racist stereotypes when it was released in Canada. The campaign featured people eating KFC with their hands instead of cutlery (tying into the brand’s “finger lickin’ good” slogan), but it was noted that the designs only featured Black individuals, a move which was subsequently dubbed as insensitive and racist. InKroud founder and Olive managing partner Tyra Jones-Hurst said to Campaign Asia that the ads “dampened what should have been a cheeky and refreshing take on an old slogan into a classically harmful and stale stereotype for the Black community.”

Senior leadership changes are nothing new, but when they coincide with a downturn in sales, you know there’s trouble going on. You can see this pretty clearly when it comes to KFC’s recent renegotiation of its senior team. 2023 and 2024 saw KFC bringing in new leadership, with Catherine Tan-Gillespie joining as chief marketing officer and chief development officer and Thuthuka Nxumalo made chief operations officer in 2024. In 2023, Paul Tuscano and Jonathan Ojany joined as chief digital officer and chief financial officer respectively.

These hires were part of what KFC U.S. president Tarun Lal called a “brand transformation,” which is designed to give the restaurant a new lease of life (and, probably, a boost in sales). It seems, therefore, that KFC’s previous leadership team could have been one of the reasons why KFC has been struggling lately, and these new additions are a chance for the company to reset and face a brighter future. There wouldn’t be any reason to hire totally new people if everything had been going well, after all.

For a brand that operates in most corners of the globe, KFC needs to try to remain uncontroversial if it’s to stay appealing to everyone. However, it hasn’t managed to do that, which has put a serious dent in its sales — as well as its reputation. In Malaysia, KFC has been the subject of a longstanding boycott since October 2023, with a growing number of Malaysian citizens refusing to eat at the restaurant as a result of KFC’s relationship with Israel. Although KFC was not on the official boycott list for BDS Malaysia, a group organising boycotts of Israel-associated companies, consumers have perceived it to be linked to the country, resulting in dramatically fewer visits to its stores.

In May 2024, this culminated in dozens of KFC units across Malaysia having to shut their doors, and in total more than 100 had to close in just over six months. Although this was dubbed a temporary closure by KFC’s operators in the country, it was still a huge blow to the brand, which it will likely not recover from for a while.

Probably the biggest reason why KFC is struggling is because it’s just not keeping up with the times. There are scores of fried chicken restaurants out there these days don’t have the unhealthy items that KFC has, and while it lays a claim to being one of the oldest and certainly one of the most prominent, that won’t last forever. “Chicken is a highly competitive space, more than it has ever been. You’ve got Chick-fil-A, Raising Cane’s, and the up-and-coming brands like Dave’s Hot Chicken,” says Placer.ai’s head of analytical research RJ Hottovy, via Nation’s Restaurant News. “It’s a space I feel like people are looking for more variety and they’re getting it elsewhere. There are more places for them to do so.”

KFC is facing especially stiff competition in the United States from Popeye’s, which is on the rise with increasingly good sales in comparison to KFC’s poor ones. Wingstop’s business is also booming, threatening KFC’s dominance in the chicken wing space. Although KFC has a strong hold on international markets, that also may soon be threatened, not just by Wingstop (which is thriving internationally) but also by brands like Jollibee.

Shrinkflation is something we’ve all had to deal with in recent years, with the size of all of our favorite goods getting smaller while the price remains the same. Unfortunately for KFC, its attempts at shrinkflation haven’t gone unnoticed, and have left people looking elsewhere for fried chicken portions that are a little more generous. Folks over on Reddit have flagged how wild the cases of shrinkflation at their local stores have gotten, with one person using their hand to demonstrate the tiny size of their tenders and drumsticks. Another person, also on Reddit, posted a picture of the size of their drumstick in comparison with the potato and gravy cup, showing how minuscule it was.

Some people have theorized that KFC’s chicken is getting so small because it buys it by weight, but sells it by the piece. This means that it gets more individual chickens for its money, and can therefore drive more profit. However, customers haven’t been fooled, and judging by the store’s sales in recent years, they’re clearly now going to places that give them more bang for their buck.

Who wants to go to a place where they don’t feel welcome? That’s likely one of the driving reasons why KFC has been struggling so much lately. It seems that KFC has dropped its standards when it comes to customer service pretty considerably, and while it’s never been particularly well-known as being the best fast food experience out there, things seem pretty bad lately. Multiple people have flocked to social media services in recent times to talk about how bad the customer service at KFC has been for them, with people flagging issues like orders not being fulfilled because of lack of product (despite payment having gone through), or employees calling customers to insist they bring back orders that weren’t meant for them. The latter was despite the customer being handed the wrong order in the first place, just FYI. Not a good look for KFC.

It also suffers when you compare it to other fried chicken chains that have significantly better customer service. In a 2024 report from QSR Magazine which ranked fast food outlets by drive-thru experience, 95% of people rated Chick-fil-A as having friendly customer service, with 88% saying the same about Raising Cane’s. KFC’s customer service satisfaction rating sat at just 77%.

You know what people come to fast food restaurants for? The food. So what happens when that food starts to not be as tasty as it used to be? Well, they stop going. This all sounds obvious, but it’s really the key reason why KFC has been going through such a hard time. Simply put, its food has got worse, and its customers have been noticing.

There are countless examples of people online pointing out the declining quality of KFC’s food. “During my recent visit to KFC, I was prepared to satisfy my mashed potato cravings, but for some reason, there was something of an aftertaste, or it tasted synthetic, like it wasn’t real food,” said one person on Reddit. This was reinforced by a further comment, with someone stating that KFC food “hasn’t been tasty for a long time. A lot of KFC’s food isn’t tasty anymore.” Other people have noticed that KFC’s pretty bad in the USA specifically, mentioning how much they’ve noticed the drop in quality when coming from other places. The problem seems to be that Kentucky Fried Chicken puts profit over people’s actual enjoyment of its food. As a result, it shot itself in the foot, and people have stopped eating there. There might be some old KFC menu items you’d forgot about, but you’re gonna wish you forgot about your last order too.

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