KFC Me: The Good, the Bad, and the BBCtikichris

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently paid a “behind the scenes” visit to KFC HQ in Woking. Here’s Part Two of my short series about that experience.

So it wasn’t just me invited to Woking. A couple of other bloggers – Heidi of Heidi Roberts Kitchen Talk came along as did Jan of A Glug of Oil. There was also a film crew with us – a couple of dudes working on a three-part “fly on the wall” documentary about KFC that’s due to air later this year on BBC One.

Here’s how the upcoming show was described to me by someone working on the PR side of things for the restaurant group:

Although the employees’ stories are the main focus for the BBC, obviously as a show about a fast food restaurant they need to cover the actual food story too including nutrition and welfare issues that surround the business. Once we told them about the previous bloggers day we held, they thought this would be a good opportunity to delve a bit deeper into this area for the documentary.

I was asked by the crew about my impressions of KFC at the start of the day and then just before heading back to London. Honestly, my attitude toward the fast food chain did shift a bit in a more favourable direction. I sort of walked away from the visit seeing KFC as perhaps the least bad of several bad options – and had to acknowledge that its chicken is indeed really yummy and makes a nice treat. Unless I catch wind that I come off like a complete idiot in the show, I’ll be sure to give a shout out as soon as I hear anything else about when the documentary will be broadcasted.

During our time at KFC, Heidi, Jan and I chatted with reps about nutrition and animal welfare, took a look in the test kitchen and – yep – ate a lot of chicken, including some top secret items not yet on the menu. Overall, I was impressed by the frank and open discussions had with the KFCers, though I felt a few questions I had were left craftily unanswered. After all that, we headed to an outlet near Heathrow where I actually tried my hand at frying some chicken myself. I’ll share more about all that in my next post in this miniseries.