KFC overtakes Pizza Hut as Yum!’s largest brand in India

NEW DELHI: KFC, which almost quit India due to protests from health and animal rights activists after its debut in 1995, has overtaken Pizza Hut as the largest-selling fast food chain of Yum! restaurants, riding on the country’s increasing appetite for chicken.

World’s largest quick-service restaurant (QSR) chain McDonald’s, domestic fried chicken chain Bangs and T.G.I. Friday’s restaurant chain too have reported a spike in chicken sales this year, confirming the widening appeal of the meat as eating out becomes a habit across the country.

“KFC is growing faster than Pizza Hut,” says Sandeep Kataria, Chief Marketing Officer of Yum! Restaurants India, while McDonald’s says the McSpicy chicken burger range is the fastest growing product across its 240 stores.

Driving this chicken mania is a number of factors including rising number of nuclear families, youngsters staying away from home, travel, rising incomes, changing lifestyles and mall culture that has boosted accessibility, competition and innovations.

“There are a lot more innovations both in QSR formats and packaged ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat formats, visibility of these products has gone up, prices are a lot more aggressive, and marketing spends have increased,” says Sushil Sawant, assistant VP of Godrej Tyson Foods, a joint venture between Godrej Agrovet and Tyson Foods Inc that rolled out frozen chicken tikkas and kababs under Yummiez brand this October.

T.G.I. Friday’s VP (Marketing and Development) Rohan Jetley says, “Chicken is the most neutral non-vegetarian product- its consumption is not religiously restricted like beef and pork are, it’s healthier/safer than red meat, and it’s not seasonal like fish and seafood.”

The growth in demand is expected to continue. The Rs. 40,000-crore domestic poultry industry expects per head chicken consumption to double to six kg a year by 2014-15 from less than six kg last year.

While existing players have drawn up aggressive expansion plans, others such as UK-based Dixy Chicken and Southern Fried Chicken are waiting in the wings to expand base in the country. Yum! India plans to have 500 KFC outlets by 2015, up from 156 now.

Kataria expects the chain to account for 60% of the $1 billion (approximately Rs 5,400 crore) sales that the company is expected to generate by then. The expansion of Pizza Hut will be slower, rising to 400 by 2015 from 216 now.

Bangs, which calls itself the country’s first domestic fried chicken quick service restaurant (QSR) brand having set up in 2009, plans to open 50 outlets within a year to add to 20 it has across 10 states, encouraged by a 30% jump in sales quarter-onquarter. The growth is not restricted to metros and traditional centres. “We are surprised... our sales in Chennai and Gujarat are doing equally well as in Punjab and Haryana,” says bangs Director Asvin Simon.

Small towns like Durgapur, Kozhikode and Kochi figure as much as metros in the expansion plans of KFC, which more than doubled the number of stores this year. Its top-selling products Zinger chicken burgers and chicken buckets account for more than two-thirds of its sales.KFC recently launched grilled fiery chicken, a juicier variant of the tandoori chicken, nationally to “very encouraging” results. Yum! attributes KFC’s rapid growth-70% CAGR-to a younger, on-the-move target audience, innovative products, and aggressive prices.