Large crowd lines up for KFC (Update)

*Photos by Nicola Muirhead

Bermuda’s only overseas fast food franchise had been closed for renovations for a month.

The first six people were in line for the 3pm re-opening at 2:30pm. By the time the store opened the numbers had swelled. It appeared that many in the line were teenagers waiting to get their KFC fix, but there were a few seniors as well.

Richard Lines, general manager, said: “It feels fantastic to re-open. There were a couple of delays but they were well worth it. In the end, the product will reflect those delays produced something viable in terms of an improvement for our customers and our staff.”

Gone off the menu are chicken nuggets, which is no longer available for sale in Bermuda by the head KFC office.

He said: “They have been replaced by original bites, which we had before and it’s a better chicken and a better experience overall.”

Milk has been added for the kids’ meals and is exploring the option of bringing in apple slices in the near future.

Mr Lines said the local KFC store would be bringing back salads in February as part of a move to a more health conscious menu.

“We’re also likely to bring back the fish sandwich around Lent.”

He said customers would now have the choice of having mashed potatoes or fries with their meals.

“Customers will now have the option of taking a two-piece meal and scaling it all the way up to a 12 piece meal by adding extra pieces of chicken for $2 more. We’re trying to give the customer a bit more freedom.

The seating area has been upgraded. Mr Lines described it as “modern and more up-to-date. I think it looks cleaner. It gives the customer a bit more room to move about. We also tried to mimic that in our kitchen to give our staff more freedom in terms of exit points and safety.

“We tried to make it so there weren’t congestion points. We think we’ve done that and we hope that our customers see that in order to make their experience better.”

KFC has added two more registers so there will be four instead of two.

“The fourth one we’re not using at the moment, but we’re going to use it as a line busting situation in the future. We want to gauge how the flow is first before we commit to something.”

Mr Lines said the reopening crowd shows that KFC “has a quality product. This is Bermuda — if you don’t have something that’s food or worth the money, they’ll let you know in a hurry.

“The fact that they’re out there in these numbers means we had a good product and that we were providing a good service. In the service industry and your product doesn't match up, then you’re not going to get the following that we have right outside now. It shows what we’ve done in the past is good, but, like anything, we can improve it, and hopefully we’ve done that with our renovation.