Drive-Thru Dreams - Adam Chandler Page 0,43

chicken-fueled bonanza.* The initiative quickly evolved into a full-blown Japanese institution with ubiquitous ads and highly choreographed television commercials featuring a signature jingle, dancing celebrities, and intergenerational tableaus of Christmas-entranced families sharing party barrels of fried chicken.

It’s difficult to overstate the success and impact of KFC’s Kentucky Christmas miracle. According to the company, an estimated 3.6 million families seek out their yuletide leg (or wing) at KFC each December, sometimes doubling the average sales of other months. The sales, which are mainly generated through company-branded Christmas dinner packages,* have come to account for a full third of KFC Japan’s annual revenue. But these mind-boggling figures are only part of the story.

I met Yuko Nakajima, my KFC Christmas-spirit guide, early on the morning of December 24, hours before the madness would kick into its highest gear. Along the way to the company headquarters in Tokyo, I passed countless signs outside convenience stores, grocers, small restaurants, even a Wendy’s, promoting Christmas-themed fried-chicken packages. Nakajima’s tour started in the deserted warrens of the headquarters office, where she clarified that December 24 isn’t a national holiday in Japan; the desks were empty because the vast majority of corporate employees had been dispatched to help out on a day when KFC foot traffic can surge to about ten times the size of an average day. “Everybody’s at the stores today,” she explained. “A large amount of people come [to corporate] from stores and so they’re all used to it. So some people really go and cook, some people are handling lines and making sure that customers are happy.”

The irony is that December 25 isn’t a national holiday in Japan either; the country’s Christian population is thought to be around 1 percent. The brilliance of the Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii! gambit is that it created an itch for Western-style Christmas revelry that Japan never knew it needed to scratch. As a result, Christmas has become a cultural phenomenon in Japan, a surreal rite that centers around a meal of American fast food. Every year, the planning and menu development begin in July, and the ads start running in November. And each of the 1,150-plus KFC stores in Japan participates. Or, as Nakajima put it, “From Hokkaido to Okinawa, everyone is doing the same thing.”

Part of what makes the messaging so effective is the simplicity of the imperative: On Christmas, families eat KFC chicken together. And since 1985, KFC has produced specialty collector holiday chicken barrels for each Christmas campaign. Overwhelmingly, these buckets feature renderings of Colonel Sanders in a Santa hat—mushing reindeer atop a flying sleigh, posing with V-fingers beside a Christmas tree, or framed by a wreath or bow. All told, Colonel Sanders does not look terribly unlike Santa Claus.*

The barrels are a crucial element of the ritual; about half of the 3.6 million Christmas customers order in advance, while others wait in line for takeout, sometimes for hours. Eating at the actual store isn’t central to the experience, whether it’s Christmas or not. “In Japan, about fifty or sixty percent of our business is takeaway,” said Nakajima. “So people bring it back and it’s not a full meal anyway. Moms will prepare something else and things like that so it would never be a full, full meal that you’ll just have KFC on your table and that’s it.”

At a KFC store in Ebisu district, the line for the Kentucky Christmas was already out the door and down the block. Inside, makeshift shelves were being filled with stacks of advance orders. At a table near a smoking section cordoned off by clear doors, crowds came and went and ate Original Recipe chicken, iced coffee, fries, and biscuits, which in Japan come with holes in the center and are served with honey. Outside, another line was made up of passersby that wanted to pose for pictures with the Colonel Sanders statue that sits outside every single KFC location in Japan. Each December, Sanders’s iconic white Kentucky colonel outfit and string tie are covered by a Santa suit and hat. It’s hard to imagine that Sanders would have minded this modification. After all, in Japan, the common perception is that Harland Sanders’s real first name is Colonel.

11 THE CULINARY CONSCIOUSNESS

If somebody told me that I’ll live a year longer by eating nothing but broccoli and asparagus from now on, I would just say every day will seem like as long. I’ll stick with the Cheetos and the Coke.

—WARREN BUFFETT

In the early days of fast food, long before