My takeaway is that Sanders cared about serving quality fast food, and KFC corporate cared about reducing costs and doing brand necromancy. The upshot is you won't get KFC chicken at KFC, just a pale, cheap imitation of the original, meanwhile the original recipe is still kicking about out there in other chicken takeaways (assuming they cook the chicken properly!)
> My takeaway is that Sanders cared about serving quality fast food, and KFC corporate cared about reducing costs and doing brand necromancy. The upshot is you won't get KFC chicken at KFC, just a pale, cheap imitation of the original
Assuming that's the case, the anecdote in the article of him walking into the kitchen in a random KFC and berating the people for making the chicken the was they did seems a bit unfair; it's not like the random people working there had any choice in the corporate policies or autonomy to choose to make the chicken in a different way. I get that he was frustrated and that this wasn't the only way he tried to fight the changes, but it shouldn't be that hard to have a little empathy for the presumably minimum wage workers who are just there to earn a paycheck.
Went there with a reporter from the NY Times, and put on a show in the kitchen. One hopes he didn't make a habit of "walking into the kitchen in a random KFC and berating the people", but this specific incident was not that at all.
> it's not like the random people working there had any choice in the corporate policies or autonomy to choose to make the chicken in a different way.
I'm torn on this one, and can see both sides. For any kind of mega-business, not just restaurant chains: If your goal is to correct corporate behavior, protest or "make things difficult for corporate" then there really aren't any good options. You could annoy the individual stores and/or frontline staff, but as you say they are usually powerless minimum-wage drones who can't change things, and even might probably be sympathetic to your cause. On the other hand, if enough people make the businesses unpleasant or do things at those business that end up costing corporate, there is a slim chance that corporate might make changes.
A big problem with mega-business style capitalism is that key stakeholders like employees and the general public are powerless. You can only change a business's behavior if you're either 1. shareholders or 2. customers via boycott or 3. regulators. Unfortunately, the non-customer general public cannot vote a corporation out, nor can they walk into their local WalMart and "complain to the owner of WalMart" like they can for smaller local businesses.
>A big problem with mega-business style capitalism is that key stakeholders like employees and the general public are powerless. You can only change a business's behavior if you're either 1. shareholders or 2. customers via boycott or 3. regulators.
Ultimately, the failure here is with the general public, for continuing to patronize these crappy businesses, and make them profitable despite whatever negative things they're doing (like decreasing quality to increase profits). Of course, if it's a monopoly situation we can probably give the public some credit since they don't have many choices, but here we're talking about restaurants, and there's almost never a shortage of restaurants to go to.
Back around 2010, the last time I allowed myself near a KFC, it was $50 for a family meal. Those prices, coupled with the Cornel's complaints, caused me to ban KFC henceforth.
I guess some people will suffer anything (the horrendous sides at KFC) to shove some fried chicken down their neck.
And a video on the history of Sanders' fight with KFC corporate, and what exactly is in the seasoning? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WJYOgzFydc
My takeaway is that Sanders cared about serving quality fast food, and KFC corporate cared about reducing costs and doing brand necromancy. The upshot is you won't get KFC chicken at KFC, just a pale, cheap imitation of the original, meanwhile the original recipe is still kicking about out there in other chicken takeaways (assuming they cook the chicken properly!)