KFC’s plan to catch up in the chicken wars: ditch the bones

While Gen Z, who prefer chicken tenders and nuggets, are the most frequent visitors to fast-food restaurants in general, they were just six per cent of KFC’s customer base through July this year. Photo by NATHAN DELONG/BUGLE-OBSERVER/Postmedia files

Fried chicken is making American restaurants more money than ever, except at KFC — the very place that pioneered selling it by the bucket load across the country.

Chick-fil-A fans swarm to its sandwiches and milkshakes, Popeyes’s launches go viral on social media, Raising Cane’s is drawing diners with its yellow Labrador mascot and 2.3 million TikTok followers, and McDonald’s now sells about as much chicken as it does beef.

But KFC? “Invisible” and “irrelevant,” according to one of its leaders. It was the only major chicken chain wh