As KFC went viral several years ago in America, it spread out to the rest of the world with an unstoppable trend. Many people go to KFC on weekends to eat with their families or just do takeaway and share chicken dinner with friends at home. However, in Japan, people become crazy about KFC on Christmas Day by making the order online several years beforehand to make sure they can get their chicken on time. So, what is the story behind it? Let’s check out together.
In 1974, as it approached to Christmas Day, KFC Japan came up with an idea by starting an advertising campaign with its long running scripts – “Kentucky for Christmas.” Since then, eating KFC as a Christmas time meal, has become a widely practiced custom in Japan. By now, the Japanese corporation Mitsubishi has already controlled the majority of KFC in Japan and also pushed the number of its outlets over a 1000 as the third-largest market for KFC after China and America.
After talking about its history, let’s have a look at how Japanese celebrate Christmas Day with KFC.
Before Christmas Day, the KFC chain restaurants will place a man-size Santa inside or outside the restaurant to tell everyone “Christmas is coming! Hurry up and book your Chicken Feast now!” In the following days, the website of KFC usually gets into a lot of issues due to the large number of bookings.
In terms of the set that you can choose for Christmas Day, there is whole page made as a special menu just for Christmas with a range of typical KFC foods, such as; fried chicken, nuggets, French fries, and some other Christmas Specials; like roasted turkey and black/white chocolate cakes.
Special menu for Christmas
After finishing your order, you may feel that you have completed your mission for Christmas Day, but actually, the hardest part is the one below:
On the pick-up day, if you don’ t go there ahead of time, you have to wait in a long queue for another 30 minutes or even more. Go early, leave early.
This is how the Japanese normally celebrate Christmas with KFC, but why did this small advertisement become so successful in Japan rather than any other country? Basically, there is only 1% of the Japanese that are Christians, which means there is no custom of celebrating Christmas Day for most of the Japanese. There was a void on this part which was filled by the advertising Campaign of KFC. Therefore, people started to realize that is how Christmas works. However, from the perspective of people from the 21st century, this completely does not make any sense, but it did at that moment. The success of KFC Japan is not how lucky they were to find the trick to make money, but they also do care about what Japanese need in their life. Ordering a KFC Pack online, gathering families together, KFC has unconsciously helped bring families together and add more colors in the lifes of people in Japan.
If you have never experienced Christmas Day in this way, Japan will never make you regret it, mark my words!
