carries fruit that smells like rotten eggs and sewage

China has been open to free markets and Western fast food chains for decades, and KFC was one of the first. For many years the brand had a less than positive image (even using slogans like “it’s not that bad” on the boxes of its products), but little by little it was recovering. KFC is owned by YumChina, a holding company that is the largest restaurant operator in China and also owns brands such as Taco Bell, Lavazza or Pizza Hut.

And the country’s star product is pizza with an ingredient that smells like rotten eggs: durian.

Chicken killer. Joey Wat, CEO of YumChina, recently gave an interview to Fortune magazine in which she shared some of the most interesting details. What’s curious is that her son calls her a “chicken killer,” a nickname she’s hard-earned considering that KFC China kills 1 billion chickens every year.

Anecdote aside, the data is relevant when you consider that China’s 1.4 billion people consume 8 billion chickens a year. KFC’s share of this figure is significant.

Market Research. This change in KFC’s trend in recent years is largely due to the practices carried out by the market research and marketing team as well as Wat himself. Cause? Management occasionally spends two to three hours sitting in their restaurants and observing what customers consume the most.

“When kids eat fried chicken, they serve it with mashed potatoes. Gen Z dips chicken thighs in the side dish and then into the pot of gravy.” Knowing this, Wat decided they needed to get rid of the bones, and in addition, they launched a burger with mashed potatoes and boneless chicken.

Bad pineapple pizza. But as we say, YumChina lives on more than just chicken. Pizza Hut is the other side of the group’s table in the country, and that’s where an ingredient that, at first glance, seems disgusting, comes into play. During this observation, Wat realized that the top seller at the time was not the Supremme pizza (with pepperoni, pork, beef, mushrooms, peppers and onions), but the durian cheese.

It’s a fruit native to Southeast Asia that is banned in some public places but apparently drives Chinese consumers crazy. I haven’t tried it, but it looks like a spiked kiwi (or a large chestnut) and the smell is a mixture of cheese, rotting meat, skunk, boiled eggs, onions and raw sewage. However, the taste seems delicious and it seems to have overwhelmed the senses of Chinese consumers who are so fond of durian cheese pizza.

stellar product. Last year, Pizza Hut sold 30 million pizzas, and the funny thing is that every fourth pizza was durian. There are many, many pizzas based on these stinking fruits that would disgust the most Neapolitan purist. And if it makes the leap to the West, it could be a direct competitor to pineapple pizza.

After all, the dominance of durian pizza in China is, like boneless chicken with mashed potatoes, the result of the observation of the company’s top management. And it seems to be working.

Images | BorgQueen, Manhattan, Miss.

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