Poultry: On the Wings of Popularity

 
Poultry is – despite bird flu – a growth segment throughout Europe. Nevertheless, there are only relatively few restaurant chains specialising in chicken & co. World-market leader KFC is also the number one in Europe with over 1,000 outlets in 2007. However, the chicken-chain pioneer was the German Wienerwald brand, which reached its zenith at the end of the seventies/in the early eighties. While chicken chains generally make little progress, more and more full-range restaurants are discovering poultry for health and wellness oriented product innovations from burgers and wraps to hot salad toppings. A pan-European survey.
 

 
UK/Ireland
 
After fish and chips, chicken ranks as the UK’s most popular hot take-away fast food. The tradition of frying chicken is thought to have been well-established, especially in Scotland, some time before it became popular in the USA. However, most of the 2,500 UK fast-food outlets which now identify chicken on their shopfronts conform to the classic fried chicken concept evolved by Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken: 1.5 kg chickens cut into nine sections, marinated, breaded and pressure-fried. KFC and derivative brands account for about 1,000 UK units and a further 1,500 independently owned fast food take-aways include fried chicken within a menu which also typically includes burgers and pizza. Researchers Horizons for Success calculates annual sales of 250 m meals, worth €1,931 m, in the UK, with a further €86.9 m of sales generated by over 140 outlets in the Republic of Ireland. Many of the UK’s 7,000-plus fish and chip/kebab take-aways also offer chicken, either deep-fried or grilled in a rotary oven, while most larger grocery supermarkets gain substantial sales from fresh-roasted chicken, typically for take-home sale.
 
The KFC chain, owned directly in the UK by US brand owner Yum! Brands, has its greatest concentration of European stores in the British Isles, with 697 stores in the UK (Britain and Northern Ireland) and 14 in the Republic of Ireland. Yum! says it is on track to open a further 30 units across both countries in 2007. The brand had an early start in Britain. As Kentucky Fried Chicken – abbreviated to the snappier and less easily imitated KFC in 1991 – it started in Preston in northern England back in 1964 and had spawned 250 branches by the time McDonald’s reached Europe in the mid-1970s. Most of the earlier units were built to a take-away format geared especially to late evening trade and this model is still widely copied by both independent operators and franchise chains. However, larger units have been encouraged in the past decade, both with restaurant sections likely to appeal to families (265 units currently in the UK and Ireland) and a similar number of stores which have drive-thru facilities on the classic US out-of-town pattern. Express take-away and food court units number 185. Two-thirds of the total UK and Ireland estate is now franchised (424 stores compared to 287 company-owned). After a no-growth period in the 1990s, management of KFC in the Irish Republic was transferred to the UK office of Yum! in 2001. Alongside the 14 units in the Republic there are 48 in Northern Ireland.
 

 
All branches in the UK and Ireland are due for a make-over in line with the KFC global ‘re-image’ introduced in November 2006 to give a more contemporary look to logo, interior and exterior design, advertising, packaging, point-of-sale and uniforms. Yum! Brands in the UK has also declared its commitment to deal with various issues where it is vulnerable to criticism. In October 2005, it stopped adding salt to its fries and lowered the salt content of most products by up to 30%. At presstime, the UK company said it was in the final stages of consumer acceptance testing of a new frying oil which does not contain trans fat, thought to be a significant contributor to raised cholesterol levels and up to 50,000 deaths annually in the USA.
 

 
Read in the full article more about the following countries:Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, France and Russia
 

 
| 14 February 2007 |