National: Calling The Chicken Bluff
Not normally big on covering fast food chains, we will make an exception for this story about beating KFC's $10 dinner challenge thing because we've been in heated discussions with a friend all week about just this kind of stuff.
The challenge, proposed in a KFC commercial, is that you can't feed a family of four a chicken dinner comparable to the chain's 7-piece offer for $10. A family goes to the store to take the challenge, and finds they can't get the ingredients for less than the fast food meal.
But, and here's the shocker: It seems the ad is misleading!
Grist ran a story last week in which their own writer/chef/grocery maven takes the same challenge, and comes up with more food for less than the $10 in the challenge:
The bottom line? The KFC meal, including Iowa state sales tax of 6 percent, is $10.58. I made the same meal (chicken, four biscuits, mashed potatoes, and gravy) for $7.94 -- and I got three extra pieces of chicken and a carcass to use for soup.The extra food came from the fact that writer Kurt Michael Friese used a whole chicken that he cut up himself. In the ad, the little girl asks for, "seven pieces of chicken." Also, Friese makes a whole batch of 24 biscuits, which, if included, only brings the cost up to $8.45.
Of course, Friese is also doing this in Iowa. Those of us on the coasts, especially big cities like Boston, San Francisco, and Miami, have to contend with higher grocery (and everything else) prices, while KFC can average out its costs and profits nationally, taking a loss on artificially low prices in some areas while making greater profits in others.
So in the end, reader, the conclusion seems to be that the challenge can be beat, but the question still remains as to whether you can beat it. If you try it out, please let us know how it goes!
Colonel of Truth: How I beat KFC's 'family meal' challenge [Grist]
KFC $10 Challenge [YouTube]
[Photo: Via ninjapoodles/flickr]
Comments
Chicken is so cheap right now; I got leg quarters just last week for 59 cents a pound. Usually I can find dark meat pieces for 88 cents a pound. So yeah, what challenge.
Posted by: Jaye Vee | November 6, 2008 05:37 PM