| Finger Lickin' Clever |
2 February 2004
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Bird-Flu Beaten Kentucky Fried Chicken Serves Fish in Indochina
Business leaders are rarely faced with a crisis like the bird flu that has hit South East Asia. While the governments there over-react, fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken has taken the hit and found a way to stay afloat. Out with the chicken, in with fish, and back to business.
B-schools and the cult of the CEO teach endlessly about the need to be flexible. It is the one trait few in business have -- or humans in general for that matter. And when it comes to the flagship product of a company, well. Yet some as yet unknown manager dared to take the lemons and make lemonade.
In Ho Chi Minh City, a/k/a Saigon, eight KFC restaurants were closed, while in Vietnam as a whole 2 million chickens have been culled and the sale of poultry has been banned. Even though there is no evidence that eating the deep fried chicken could cause exposure, let alone infection, Nguyen Chi Kien, KFC's Vietnam deputy country director, undersold the situation when he told Reuters, "It has been very hard for us."
Fish, though, is in plentiful supply in Vietnam, which is mostly coastline. The batter works as well on fish as on chicken. The oils, the deep-friers, the drinks, everything can still be used. There was no focus-group to decide this. There was no preliminary test marketing. The company needed to open those stores, and this stroke of simple genius did that.
Will Vietnam Fried Fish ever replace the original? One doubts it. And General Giap might not make as warm and fuzzy a corporate icon as Colonel Sanders did. Still, for a while, this is a solution. And a great lesson in business flexibility.
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