KFC AM: a tale of shattered dreams

Breakfast: the most important meal of the day. KFC: the most significant thing to happen to the out and about dining experience since man first developed the sandwich. You’ll have understood our joy then upon first discovering that KFC was running an ops shakedown for a breakfast menu at their flagship Marble Arch outlet. You see, KFC has been slow to innovate of late, resulting in slight variations on existing burgers, different ways to fold a wrap or at worst, the mere addition of an alternate sauce in a long established product. The promise then of a full new menu was so exciting that we naturally had to cover it here at KFB, twice.

KFC AM as it was known was an exciting and boundary-pushing way to start to the day. Eggy bread sandwiches, breakfast wrapstars, grilled(!) tomato ketchup, waffles, porridge and the pièce de résistance, chicken sausages, all featured on the first iteration of the menu. In total around 12 new menu items appeared over the course of the first year. The Colonel had found a way to make breakfasts not only different, not only to contain chicken (and no, eggs don’t count) but most importantly of all: a way to ensure they were as delicious as his long-established lunch and dinner time favourites.

So what of it I hear you ask? Why is my favourite blog referring to KFC AM in the past tense when I saw it advertised on my way to work this very morning? Well, my chicken-loving readers, KFC AM is dead to us. So far removed is the current iteration of the menu that we feel ashamed to associate it with the Colonel. All that innovation, that spark, that unique taste and yes, even that chicken has now been removed. What we are left with is the same bacon rolls, (pork!) sausage sandwiches and scrambled egg that you could find at any sub-par greasy spoon. The wrapstar? A distant memory. The breakfast box meal? Moved on to a happier place. In fact, every uniquely-named product from the original line-up bar the Platter has been removed. And that Platter - it's replaced eggy bread with toast and chicken sausages with Cumberland. Just take a look back at the original line up if you think you can bear the pain and then compare it to the shameful 'range' now available.

We understand that the British public might not have been ready, that they probably voted with their wallets and left us with this. Colonel, we salute you for trying something so unlike the rest, but what we can’t commend you for is not sticking to your guns and pushing harder, adding a little more to your marketing budget, running free trials to help people get over the chicken sausage fear.

You had a chance to be so different, Colonel, so special. But all you’ve left us with is a hole in our hearts once filled with eggy bread, Southern-style buttery breakfast buns and chicken sausages. A hole so large that even a Hot Rod box meal couldn’t fill it. Colonel, you’ve let us down.