12 Signs KFC Is Struggling

As of late, the competition in the realm of fried chicken quick service restaurants has been pretty fierce. From Raising Cane's to Chick-fil-A and comparatively smaller companies like Slim Chickens and Dave's Hot Chicken, . Surprisingly enough, one of the oldest and most well-known fried chicken restaurants is not one of them: KFC.

It may be true that by Scottish immigrants. However, in the United States, KFC is considered the granddaddy of fried chicken joints, having been started by Colonel Harland Sanders in Corbin, Kentucky in 1930. Despite serving fried chicken to customers for almost 100 years, KFC seems to be struggling recently with restaurant closures, declining food quality, shrinking portions, and other fairly significant problems.



When , we found that while KFC is a better value cost wise, the quality of Popeyes chicken is better — in spite of the fact that KFC has been serving chicken for 40 years longer than Popeyes. Read on to find out some of the signs that KFC is struggling. KFC HQ is uprooting from Kentucky to save money on taxes In February 2025, Yum! Brands — the parent company of KFC — announced that it would be moving the fried chicken chain's headquarters from Louisville, Kentucky to Plano, Texas — where KFC Global is already located.

With the repositioning of the headquarters the company will also be relocating 100 corporate employees over the next six months and 90 remote positions will be asked to move in the office in Plano over the following 18 months. Yum! Brands CEO David Gibbs cited the basis for the move as wanting to position the company for sustainable growth and maximize the company's culture and talent. CPA Paul Miller from the firm Miller & Company told that another reason was that the Lone Star state has lower taxes and is more pro-business.

Kentucky has a 5% corporate tax rate on business' profits but Texas only taxes the company's gross sales by 0.331% compared to 0.75%.

Miller explained with the relocation, KFC's franchisees will pay royalties to the new headquarters and the company will be doing its payroll and accounting in Texas as well which means that the company will pay a majority of its taxes in the state. The fried chicken chain isn't the first company to make this move, last year SpaceX relocated from Delaware, and in January Meta announced that it would be moving it's content oversight team from California. However, KFC moving its headquarters from the state it originated from and is also named after — especially for tax reasons — makes you wonder how the company is truly doing.

Sales are struggling The fried chicken restaurant's sales have not been doing well recently. In April 2025, covered Circana's Definitive U.S.

Restaurant Ranking 2025 report which showed that while fried chicken chains like Raising Cane's, Wingstop, Chick-fil-A, Zaxby's, Bojangles, and Popeyes saw spending increase in 2024, KFC saw spending fall. In fact, the company's consumer spending in the United States decreased by 4% to $4.34 billion dropping its ranking on Circana's list to number 23, putting it at a lower position on the list than both its competitors, Raising Cane's and Wingstop.

In addition, Yum! Brands' third quarter results came out in November 2024 and showed U.S. KFC's same-store sales dropped by 5% which made for the third quarter in a row that the company saw sales decline.

KFC's same-store sales on the global side also decreased by 4%, however, its system sales were up 1%. CEO David Gibbs attributed the chain's challenges to a complex consumer environment and the chain's limited-time offers underperforming. In May 2024, Gibbs even admitted that KFC was struggling in the U.

S. after that quarter saw same-store sales in the U.S.

drop by 7%. The chain's global same-store sales also decreased by 2% the quarter before. That time Gibbs stated that the cause of the struggles were difficult weather events, fierce competition, and value promotions from other quick-service chicken chains.

Shutting down locations in the United States and abroad For fried chicken chains like Raising Cane's, Popeyes, Dave's Hot Chicken, and more, business is booming and new locations are popping up all over the place. While called Saucy in Orlando, Florida in December 2024, over the last year it has also seen a fair amount of locations shutter their doors. The locations that have closed are in the United States as well as overseas.

Starting domestically in August 2024, KFC had its franchisee, EYM Chicken, close 25 restaurants across Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. According to , EYM Chicken was only listed in KFC's franchise disclosure documents as owning 47 stores meaning that this closure affected more than half of its locations. Then in December 2024, a location in Marion, Iowa suddenly closed after serving the community for 15 years with no explanation, just signs that stated that the restaurant was permanently closed.

On the global side, there were 283 locations in Turkey that closed after Yum! Brands terminated its franchise agreement with IS Gida in January 2025, claiming that the company failed to meet Yum! Brands' standards. The former franchisee, which was $214 million in debt, then filed for bankruptcy in February and blamed the unexpected end to its agreement with Yum! Brand for its downfall. There were also eight locations in Israel that closed their doors to customers in March 2025 after a franchisee — Mefaco — announced that it would be halting business at all of its locations but didn't provide any explanation as to why.

Food quality is not what it used to be There have been claims on discussion forums that the quality of the fried chicken chain's food has been declining over the years. In fact, KFC was ranked as one of . One customer took to Reddit to look for answers as to whether the chain had really gone downhill or it was just them.

Most of the responses in the thread were fairly similar stating that it was really a roll of the dice and sometimes depended on which location you were visiting and how busy they were — apparently, the trick is the busier the restaurant the fresher the chicken. There were others in the comments who said that the quality in general had declined and highlighted the fries, mashed potatoes, and gravy as being especially bad. Redditors in a UK Reddit thread titled "Why is KFC so bad these days?" shared similar sentiments complaining about the food consistently being cold, greasy, tough, and tasteless.

In another discussion on Quora regarding the chain's food quality, there were multiple customers who stated that the taste and quality of the chicken had definitely seen a change. There was even one user who called KFC a sinking ship. Another claimed that the reason the taste has changed is because, to cut costs, the company has been including a smaller amount of the famous 11 herbs and spices in the breading for the chicken.

This hasn't been verified, but the customer sentiment seems to be that KFC isn't what it used to be. Prices have increased significantly Not only is the food quality declining, but just to add salt to the proverbial wound, KFC's prices have seen a noticeable increase. While it's not uncommon for prices at fast food chains to rise, it does appear to be deterring some customers from eating at the fried chicken chain.

In March 2025, a diner from Kentucky took to after discovering that a single chicken drumstick was $4.79 with the simple proclamation "we are doomed." There were some customers in the thread who attributed the high price to inflation while others stated that it was corporate greed.

A different redditor in the thread broke down the cost explaining that on Grubhub for delivery in NYC it was $4.19, pickup was $3.49, and delivery to their mom's address in Maryland was $2.

69, adding that the markup is crazy. Another Reddit discussion broke down and complained about the high price tag menu items as well. One example was that a four-piece chicken meal now costs over $27 — which is eye popping to say the least.

A woman on TikTok was also left shocked and disgusted after paying $59.04 for a 16-piece meal with four sides and three chicken tenders. Food portions have been shrinking A number of companies have been instituting shrinkflation — reducing the size or quantity of an item without decreasing the price — in order to preserve their margins with the rise of labor and transportation costs, reported.

Based on recent complaints from diners, it appears that KFC may be one of the companies participating in the practice. A diner on Reddit stated that they noticed the chain is cutting chicken that used to be offered as one piece, like thighs, in half to count as two pieces of chicken. One even claimed, "I've had KFC a few weeks ago and none of the pieces were from the thigh or breast.

I had a bunch of spine and back pieces that were really just battered bones and some weird joints...

it was inedible." In a different Reddit thread a customer posted a drumstick they paid $4.19 for that had virtually no meat on it; commenters' were appalled and disgusted but not surprised.

There were claims in one Reddit thread that KFC buys the smaller chickens on purpose because the company buys chicken by the pound but sells it by the piece. An article from explained that customers in Australia and Singapore have also had issues with the size of the chain's chicken and sides. KFC has been getting trickier with the wording of its menu items, pointed out that some of the family meals advertise that they come with large sides while others list that they come with individual sides.

So, diners need to pay extra close attention or risk being severely disappointed by what they receive. Changes in leadership KFC has made a lot of leadership changes over the past few years with a fair amount of them occurring in 2025 alone. Occasional leadership changes are not uncommon, however, these shuffling of executives could be the company evoking change to see if it shifts the company's declining success.

It started off the year by naming Scott Mezvinsky as KFC Division CEO, replacing Sabir Sami. Mezvinsky actually worked for Yum! Brands for 20 years and before being appointed CEO was president of Taco Bell North America and International. In February 2025, the company also announced that it was promoting Catherine Tan-Gillespie— who previously served as Chief Marketing Officer and the Chief Development Officer for KFC U.

S. — to the president of KFC U.S.

effective as of April 1. Before that, in May 2024, KFC U.S.

announced that Heather McCoy would be its new chief people officer and Ryan Koon would be its new chief development officer. Earlier in 2024, Thuthuka Nxumalo was named chief operations officer and Christopher Poirier was brought on as chief new concept officer. In summer 2023, Paul Tuscano was given a new role of chief digital officer and a year before that in June 2022 Turun Lal was named president of KFC U.

S. — obviously now replaced by Tan-Gillespie. Customer service is not up to par It seems that along with the declining food quality and portion sizes, the fried chicken chain's customer service has also gone downhill.

highlights good customer service as essential in the restaurant industry because it encourages customers to come back and sets the restaurant or restaurant chain apart from its competitors. A diner shared their experience at KFC in a Reddit thread and explained that not only did the restaurant they went to look abandoned but the employees were not present when speaking with them and often left long awkward pauses before responding. A different user in the discussion said they've experienced bad service even when visiting a rebuilt KFC and ended up waiting 50 minutes for their meal when they were told 15 minutes.

There is even a public Facebook group called "KFC COMPLAINTS" that has over 50,000 members. In it there are countless complaints about people getting food poisoning, being given attitude by staff, not receiving orders and then being told by managers that they can't help them, being given small portion sizes, and even having managers flat out refuse to give them their order. None of this bodes well in an industry where customer service is almost as important as the food itself.

There have been multiple boycotts against the restaurant company Boycotts and protests are never a positive thing for a business to experience, especially a restaurant since it needs customers to buy its food in order to survive. There have been a few boycotts against KFC in recent years. Most recently, in April 2025, there were over 170 people arrested in Pakistan after 11 different attacks on KFC locations by protesters armed with sticks who were fueled by anti-U.

S. sentiment and opposition to the war in Gaza. The Witness — a site that lists companies to boycott in support of Palestine — also has KFC on its list of companies to boycott urging people not to eat or work at the restaurant because its parent company, Yum! Brands, is an investor in Israeli startups.

When IS Gida declared bankruptcy in February 2025 after Yum! Brands terminated its franchise agreement and it had to close 283 KFC restaurants, reports indicated that boycotts of the brand due to the Gaza conflict may have also played a role as there was a 40% drop in KFC sales in Turkey. In August 2024, KFC Indonesia reported losses of $21.5 million in its first quarter which is 60 times more losses than it experienced the year before; the company at the time attributed some of the extreme loss that it experienced to pro-Palestinian boycott.

There is even a website called Kentucky Fried Cruelty that is run by PETA and urges people not to eat at the fried chicken fast food chain due to its animal welfare practices. The fried chicken chain's franchises are experiencing layoffs Besides KFC having franchisees close locations around the world, the company has also had a franchisee let go of employees. In November 2024, KBP Foods — the fried chicken chain's largest domestic franchisee — laid off 29 employees.

KBP Foods started its relationship with KFC in 1999 but is also a franchisee of Taco Bell, Arby's, and Sonic, and has over 1,100 restaurants across 32 states — more than 830 of those locations are KFC restaurants. The employees that were let go worked on the company's corporate side and were located at its headquarters in Leawood, Kansas. A spokesperson with KBP told Nation's Restaurant News that the layoffs were part of a restructuring that the company is doing and amounts to less than 9% of its corporate team.

The reported that the franchisee stated the decision to restructure was fueled by "inflation and consumer headwinds." It's struggling to keep up with the competition The amount of fried chicken chains in the United States as well as around the world has increased exponentially since KFC first started. This means that the competition within the fried chicken realm has become especially fierce and, unfortunately, KFC has had a hard time keeping up.

Yum! Brands CEO David Gibbs has even admitted that the KFC Brand is struggling in the United States. also reported on data released by Placer.ai that showed that the fried chicken chain experienced a 12% decline in visits in March 2024.

Meanwhile, Popeyes' visits were up almost 13% in February 2024 and Wingstop's visits increased by over 23%. Nation's Restaurant News also cited 2023 data from Technomic Ignite that revealed that competitors saw sales increase by between 5% to 20% but KFC's U.S.

sales increased by just less than 2%. published a story in May 2024, that showed that Popeyes was outperforming KFC with system sales up 71% over the previous five years while KFC only saw an increase of 17%. In addition, covered Circana's Definitive U.

S. Restaurant Ranking 2025 report which showed that KFC dropped to fifth in QSR chicken chains consumer spending, falling behind Chick-fil-A, Popeyes, Raising Cane's, and Wingstop. It's had some marketing misses over the years but it has also some pretty weird advertisements.

On top of marketing misses the chain has also had some unfortunate mishaps that have damaged its reputation. In March 2025 KFC released a commercial that depicted people who worshipped gravy baptizing a boy who was then transformed into a piece of fried chicken followed by the words "believe in chicken." Most users in a marketing Reddit thread were thoroughly confused by the commercial, one even compared it to a scene from a horror film.

Another simply stated, "Yeah this commercial was annoying, there was no payoff. It was not funny. It just felt like a massive waste of time.

" There was an incident where KFC Canada's director of marketing tweeted billboards from the company's "It's Finger Lickin' Good" campaign that only featured black people eating fried chicken which, understandably, received a fair amount of pushback. Then when KFC expanded to China it released signage with its popular "Finger Lickin' Good" saying but when properly translated it instead read "Eat Your Fingers Off!" Someone should have double-checked the translation because that's just off-putting. Finally, in November 2022, KFC Germany blamed a bot for an automated notification that was sent to app users urging them to treat themselves to celebrate Kristallnacht also known as "Night of the Broken Glass" which is when Nazis launched attacks against Jewish people in Germany — certainly not a holiday that should be celebrated.

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