KFC commercial…
October 26, 2008So there is currently a KFC commercial on about how you can’t cook their chicken at home for less than you can purchase it for in the store. They call it the “KFC challenge”. Then they show a middle-class family walking through the grocery store picking up new packages of all the necessary ingredients. They reach 10$ and say, “woo, lets get KFC”. And I just want to make sure that you all realize this is totally bogus!
The commercial makes me pretty upset every time I see it. And my roommate, adding fuel to the fire says something like, “They are right. If you have to buy everything, it costs more than $10.” But she and I both realize that this is inconsequential because you don’t use everything you buy! The commercial buys a container of spice to use two shakes of it. This advocacy of stupid finance is not what anyone needs to hear with our amazing economy. Although I choose to never talk about (big headache-causing) problems as to why the banks starting give those stupid mortgages… I give pity to the person getting lent money because they can’t determine a rose from it’s roots if they are constantly fed stupid math like this KFC commercial!
On an intellectually curious note, I would be interested to know how this test would work at a store with a bulk section. Then you could actually purchase exactly what you need. I suppose I’m biased because KFC makes me sick to my stomach, but this ridicilous ad campaign makes me a little sick to my stomach as well.
There is some short term/long term issue with it:
This summer, I was in Cambridge for slightly less than 3 months. Basic staples like flour were important to me, but did I really need to buy corn syrup? I mean, it was very hot, and was I really going to bake a pecan pie, which is the only thing I buy corn syrup for. I could have bought a pecan pie, and not spent the money on the ingredients.
Also, you might not like something if you make it for the first time. My mother added capers to something, so I don’t have to buy them now to find out I don’t love them, but if you cook enough, you end up with things you had to buy to find out you didn’t like it.
The DC metro area has a huge number of Central/South American Chicken joints— They roast chickens, and you get 1/4 or 1/2 and a couple sides for less than KFC advertises (I haven’t had their food since kindergarten)– There I think the price differential between my kitchen and theirs is much smaller. I’m not going to buy a rotisserie to cook chickens occasionally, they get better energy per chicken than I would, probably a better deal on chickens, and they do plantains much much better than I do.
Of course, they also serve real food, unlike KFC.
There are at least two ways to think of prepared food: everyday and special occasion. For everyday food, the home cook cost for a box of spices or a sack of flour can be spread over many meals. For example, the cost of mix for pancakes on Sunday AM is only the amount of pancake mix actually used, because the remainder of the box will be used on later Sundays. Notice that a bigger box probably means a lower cost. On the other hand, the cost of brown sugar for holiday gingerbread men is the cost of the whole package, because the sugar probably won’t be usable next year. Notice that a smaller box probably means a lower cost.
Back to KFC.
If KFC is your everyday food, than their commercial is fraud and you can certainly do better at home. Generally, restaurants budget less than 30% of the price to buy ingredients. Obviously, for fancier establishments, this percent drops much, much lower.
However, if KFC is special occasion food, than their commercial make sense.
What they are saying is that people who eat fried chicken once a year will save money by buying KFC.