Mohamushkil at KFC

Let me confess, I am not much of a KFC fan, but when they’ve come up with their Chizza, I was invited there for a food tasting session. As it’s close to my place, I’ve gone to the CC1 outlet for the tasting. Now, these big food chains have always surprised me with something. I won’t comment about their taste of products (because that varies a lot from person to person), but the standard working process and delivery within that very specific time duration is something I always liked. Frankly, this time, the catch was, I was allowed to take a kitchen tour of the outlet. No, it was not like checking the secret recipe, but the idea was to understand the kitchen operation and understanding the different operational activities that goes on.

Any KFC outlet staffing is generally done in 4 layers (as I was told).

• The restaurant manager taking care of the business,
• under him Asst Restaurant manager(s) taking care of different departments like front of the house/ supply base/ kitchen and centralized delivery store operations
• shift managers (depending upon the business volume and outlet size, this number varies) and
• team members (the actual doers…)

And with all the staff layering and very very specific SOP (standard operating procedure), the order- service time-cycle normally is 4-5 min per order (unless something of large volume comes in). And, needless to say, the veg and non-veg work areas are kept strictly separate and color coded.

Now, coming to food, KFC is nothing new to us and we’ve all been-there-done-that type. But, I love their fiery grilled chicken and I was served one along with their newly launched watermelon mojito. The chicken was good, as usual but the mojito was slightly over-sweet to my taste bud. And, sensing this, immediately the chicken popcorn was served to us- which I love anyhow.

Now, came the new kid on the block. Chizza is basically the KFC version of Chicken-base-pizza. The slightly flattened fried chicken is topped with cheese and onion/ green chilly slices and finished in the oven. The result is a surprise change from their average fried chicken and is really good. Along with that, we tasted their black-mojito, which is made of pepsi as a base and was a good chiller. Overall, the chizza is definitely recommended.

The management probably understood that, more than me, kids would love this thing and while leaving, we were handed over the already prepared KFC hamper. And, at home, probably in a long time, I saw my son jumping around happily with my blogging staff- Chizza is definitely a kid-friendly item and it seemed he loved it even more.

Bon apetite !!!

Comments and critics welcome.

I can be reached at 9903528225/ indrajit.lahiri@ymail.com