theceomagazine.com | 55CHICKEN
WINNER,
WINNER,
DINNER
Alan Chan has turned around KFC’s flagging fortunes
in Hong Kong, transforming the franchise into
a much more appetising proposition.WORDS ADRIAN FLORES • IMAGES GARETH BROWNW
hen Alan Chan assumed his current role in 2010 as the
CEO of Birdland, the company operating the KFC
franchise in Hong Kong and Macau, it was caught
between a rock and a hard place. Revenue was low. Debts
were bad. Birdland was haemorrhaging money. “We were
at the edge of bankruptcy,” recalls Alan. “The biggest
problem was that all the restaurants were badly run.”
Even worse, Hong Kong locals perceived KFC as a chicken-only restaurant. In
response, Alan brought in a new strategy called ‘Chicken and More’. Fried chicken
was still the mainstay of the menu, but it also aimed to offer more options to
customers. But Alan knew there was no point in offering ‘more’ if it couldn’t be
clearly defined, otherwise it would just be offering options that were either
irrelevant or made no sense at all.
“First of all, we decided to include a couple of things like dessert and soft-serve
ice-cream. I think coming to any restaurant, dessert and soft serve is always a good
complement to it,” Alan says. “Another thing is that when customers come to
KFC, they want chicken as the excitement, but, on the other hand, they want
some staple for stomach-filling purposes.” »Interview | INSPIRE