Oral History: KFC In China Expands Local Tastes

Many things have changed quite a lot in China since my first visit to the country in 1987, but one of the most subtle and yet also quite profound is the vast transformation of Chinese eating habits. The China I first encountered in the 1980s was one where local flavors dominated the eating scene everywhere, from major cities like Beijing down to the smallest villages in Guizhou province.

Today that picture has changed dramatically, with cities like Shanghai boasting a wide range of domestic and foreign cuisines that can rival any other top city in Asia. Even mid-sized cities often host a wide range of non-native regional Chinese cuisines, as well as the occasional restaurant cooking up famous foreign cuisines like Italian or Japanese.

The huge success of fast food giant KFC in China reflects this rapid opening of Chinese palates to non-local flavors, and in many ways is a microcosm of this tale of China’s expanding tastes. I had the recent pleasure of hearing some of the nuts-and-bolts behind this tale in an interview with Warren Liu , who served as one of KFC’s top China executives during the 1990s when it was still figuring out the market.

The interview was part of a broader series of oral histories I’m doing with western executives who worked in China in the 1980s and ‘90s at major multinationals that were trying to develop the market.

The Beijing I first discovered on my first trip to China in 1987 was one where local Northern cuisine dominated, and even regional foods like Sichuan, Hunan and Cantonese were hard to find. Non-Chinese food was nearly non-existent in Beijing at that time, except for in the handful of foreign joint venture hotels that served mostly westerners and were largely closed to local Chinese.

In 1988 a Hong Kong publisher hired me to write a restaurant guide to Beijing for foreigners. Only after signing the contract did I realize what a challenge it would be to identify the 50-100 restaurants needed to fill such a book. Back then the number of restaurants in Beijing serving major regional cuisines like Sichuan or Cantonese were few and far between, and less mainstream cuisines like those from Xi’an or Yunnan were nonexistent.

As a 23-year-old from America in Beijing at that time, I missed the variety of food from home and would often travel big distances to sample something different or even remotely western. So I was both surprised and delighted to hear in late 1987 that KFC had become the first major foreign restaurant operator to open a store on the southwestern edge of Tiananmen Square.

The original KFC was quite large by western standards, able to seat several hundred people on two floors. The place was nearly always full in its first few years, mostly with families curious to try this “exotic” western food that was around twice as expensive as comparable Chinese fare. In addition to the food, the original KFC was distinguished from most local restaurants by its attention to cleanliness and friendly service.

I made many trips down to that lone KFC over the next 2 years, usually making the hour-long trip by bicycle from the China University of Geosciences in the Haidian District where I lived and worked at that time.

During my interview, Liu, who has also written a book about his KFC experience in China, described for me the challenges of introducing KFC’s western business model and food into such a foreign market. The chain pioneered the concept of localization in its restaurants, offering such unconventional dishes as soy milk and rice platters that one would never find at Western KFCs.

Liu also recounted how KFC became a sort of status symbol for diners intrigued not only by the food but also the eating experience. He recalled an instance where one couple held their wedding reception in a KFC restaurant – something that would be unthinkable in the West. The restaurants also later became a local status symbol for many mid-tier and smaller cities, which often offered strong incentives such as prime locations and cheap rents to get KFC to come.

Fast forward from those early days in the 1980s and ‘90s to the present, when KFC now has more than 4,000 restaurants in China and counts the market as one of its biggest profit centers. While the chain no longer commands the same aura of specialness it once did in major cities like Shanghai and Beijing, Liu says it still gets lots of enthusiastic requests from smaller cities eager to lure the chain to their markets.

I seldom go to KFC anymore in Shanghai where I now live, partly because I’ve become more health conscious over the years but more because there are so many other choices now.

It’s hard to walk down any major commercial street in Shanghai these days without passing a Sichuan, Cantonese or Hunan restaurant, and even eateries serving second-tier cuisines like Xinjiang, Xi’an or Jiangxi food are easy to find. Foreign food is equally easy to find in Shanghai, which now even supports several locally developed chains like Element Fresh and Da Marco that serve authentic western fare.

What’s exciting to me is to see so many young people embracing many of these non-local cuisines, which contrasts with some of my older Shanghai friends who still often prefer to eat local favorites like xiaolongbao dumplings and hongshao rou.  In many ways this embracing of new flavors reflects China’s rapid opening to the outside world over the last quarter century, including a growing receptiveness to non-Chinese ideas and ways of doing things.

The KFC experience certainly hasn’t always been easy for the company, not only in the early days when it was trying to develop the market but also more recently when it has come under fire for lapses in its food safety standards. But from the bigger perspective, the chain’s huge success reflects many things about China’s broader gains, including its rising living standards and its embrace of diversity.