KFC is striving to ensure that it will meet its typical high demand in Japan for Christmas Day by urging customers to pre-order, avoiding the creation of the usual long times that now violate coronavirus social distancing measures, Reuters reported Wednesday.
Many Japanese partake in a KFC fried chicken dinner on Christmas, a tradition born in the 1970s as a result of savvy marketing and, the legend goes, a fateful turn as Santa Claus for the man who ran what has become the most important KFC franchise in Japanese history. As Japan has a very small Christian population, most citizens do not celebrate the holiday proper and the country had no widespread established traditions before KFC filled the void, offering upscale fried chicken dinners for a romantic couples’ night on December 25.
KFC Christmas meal boxes are pictured on December 23, 2020 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images)
KFC Christmas marketing is especially aggressive in Japan and the company often presents itself as a defining cultural marker of Christmas as a holiday.
The popularity of KFC Christmas dinners, Reuters reported, apparently caused some concern for company executives in light of the ongoing Chinese coronavirus pandemic. Japan has documented 1.7 million cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began and over 18,000 deaths; in the past month, that tally has been upwards of 3,000 cases. While not among the world’s highest coronavirus infection rates, Japanese officials have implemented strict measures to contain the virus and have expressed concerns that the Omicron variant, discovered by South African scientists in November, may pose a significant threat to society, instituting a sweeping travel ban that keeps non-citizens and non-residents out indefinitely. Japan has documented 32 Omicron cases, but about half of them were confirmed in the past 24 hours.
People queue in front of a KFC restaurant on December 23, 2020 in Tokyo, Japan. KFC at Christmas has become something of a tradition in Japan with some attributing its yuletide popularity to a kindergarten delivery being made in a Santa Claus outfit which was such a success it was requested by a number of other schools and subsequently gave the company the idea of associating its product to Christmas. The chain launched its first Christmas campaign in December 1974, and has continued to do so every year at all its outlets nationwide. In 2018, KFC Japan posted all-time high sales of roughly 68 million USD for the five days from December 21 to 25. Roughly 10 percent of its annual turnover for the entire year. (Photo by Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images)
“This year, KFC Holdings Japan, the domestic licenser of the Yum! Brands Inc. franchise, is nudging customers to order online and then pick up their chicken at a certain time, rather than forming up in the traditional queues,” Reuters reported. “The run-up to Christmas is the company’s biggest sales week and it hopes the move will help maintain those revenues, which fell last year from a record, and let customers keep a tradition that stretches back to the 1970s.”
The first major move to encourage customers to play ahead and not rush to restaurants on December 25 was an “early bird” special that offered discounts for reserving a meal. The deal ended on December 12, according to KFC’s official Japanese website. The top deal KFC offered for “early birds” was a “party bucket” to share with a large group for 4,000 yen (about $35).
“As an infection countermeasure, we’re spacing out reservations to try to limit as much as possible the times when people are bunched together,” Tetsuya Noguchi, a KFC Japan spokesman, told Reuters.
Other deals still available in Japan at press time include a “premium” roast chicken dinner, various specials including a chocolate dessert for two or larger groups, and a chicken breast stuffed with cheese sauce.
Reuters noted that KFC enjoyed record Christmas sales in 2019 before the pandemic and lockdown restrictions resulted in a sharp decline in profits, as many were not gathering or dining out. In addition to the typical reasons sales are high in Japan for the company during Christmas, local outlets noted that KFC had successfully fueled a meme recipe, “Devil Cooked Rice,” that had become popular online. The recipe required pieces of KFC chicken to be placed into a rice cooker with rice, soy sauce, and chicken broth.
KFC first offered a Christmas dinner deal in Japan in 1974, the brainchild of franchisee Takeshi Okawara, who opened the first restaurant in the country in 1970. Okawara was recruited to cater a Christmas party at a local Catholic school and to play Santa Claus, and now admits that, after his Santa Claus performance grew into a local curiosity, he lied on television and claimed Americans eat chicken for Christmas.