KFC Thought Beef Was The Next Move — Then It Completely Failed

Fried chicken transcends culinary boundaries and is beloved around the world. Much of this popularity can be directly linked to Colonel Sanders and Kentucky Fried Chicken, who turned the dish into a household name. But if the corporate chicken powers that be had their way, Kentucky Roast Beef might have become just as popular, only it didn't quite work out. In 1968, KFC was experiencing rapid growth after becoming one of the largest chains in America. At this point, the company decided to branch out beyond chicken.

Reportedly, this was out of fear that other fried chicken restaurants were cutting in on KFC's business. The first Kentucky Roast Beef and Ham opened in Las Vegas. The menu featured warm beef, seasoned with the Colonel's blend of herbs and spices, on buttered buns. The test location sold $70,000 worth of sandwiches in its first month. That's a lot of beef. The experiment proved successful, and the company opened more than 100 Kentucky Roast Beef locations, though some were called Kentucky Roast Beef and Ham. Around the same time, KFC operated a chain of fish and chip restaurants on the West Coast. Things seemed prime for success.

The problem with trying to sell fast food roast beef is that roast beef takes time. McDonald's faced a similar issue when they tried their hand at roast beef sandwiches. Coordinating the roasting of beef with the lunch and dinner rush is not easy. Also, beef is more expensive than chicken, so customers expecting KFC prices were not getting what they wanted.

Within two years, KFC had closed every Kentucky Roast Beef location. At the time, a roast beef sandwich was $0.79, which is about $6.77 today. Right now, a roast beef sandwich at Arby's goes for around $4 to $5, so KRB was charging premium prices. Even more damning for the fledgling beef restaurant, a meal from KFC that included two pieces of chicken, a side, and a biscuit cost only $0.85, which seems like the better deal.

No matter how good the product was — and by all accounts Kentucky Roast Beef made tasty sandwiches — if it's not at a price people are willing to pay, it won't succeed. The logistics and economics of selling roast beef just proved too difficult for the company to pull off.

Of course, Arby's has shown that it's not impossible to specialize in roast beef. While some of its meat is smoked elsewhere and shipped to the store, the chain slow roasts its beef in store for about four hours — one of the many facts about Arby's you should know. The restaurant approached the process of making roast beef differently from its competitors. As a result, it never had to battle against a rush like Kentucky Roast Beef, nor did it have to compete with its own cheaper prices on other meats.