KFC’s Response To Their Headline-Grabbing Chicken Shortage Is Grade-A Humor

Every popular food company has its missteps. Everyone remembers “New Coke.” More recently, McDonald’s went so sideways with its Szechuan sauce shortage that they started a podcast to make it right for Rick & Morty and nugget fans alike. Kentucky Fried Chicken is now experiencing its own stumbling block, having to apologize for a recent chicken shortage as a result of switching food distributors in England to save money.

The switch itself actually cost the fried chicken chain money when the food deliveries never showed up, but customers did. By the start of the week, nearly 700 of KFC’s 900 U.K. locations were forced to close. The company tried to release a statement in the form of a joke, but that didn’t go over well with hungry customers who were turned away with their appetites unfulfilled.

In a much better, much more apologetic, far more hilarious statement, KFC’s marketing department found a way to rearrange the letters on the famous bucket of chicken in a full-page apology ad in the Sun and Metro papers to show its deepest regrets, and further explain the disaster.

Consumers were way more into this apology than the previous ad, and KFC doubled down on the print ad with a Twitter Q&A to explain themselves even further.

While BBC is reporting that many stores have reopened, there’s no news yet on how many have reopened with a full menu, or how long it will take the fast-food chain to fully re-coop.