Out of all the fried chicken around me I rank as follows:

#1 The independent convenience store near me makes up their own batter. Rank A.

#2: 7/11 yeah I can't believe it either. Rank B+ and they're the cheapest. Kinda everything else is overpriced.

#3: Mary Browns. Used to be higher but got worse lately. Rank C-

#4: KFC. I don't buy it anymore. Bland. Rank D. Sometimes I got a Big Crunch when the KFC was a combo building with Taco Bell but they killed off combo stores I guess. I only ever went for Taco Bell.

#5: Popeye's. Fucking awful. Actually grosses me out. F rank.

KFC is dogshit. The OG Colonel Sanders said as much before he died. I think his wife opened a restaurant that was based on their original recipe and tried to keep up the quality of the OG KFC but no idea what the status of that is and I think it was only a single restaurant not a chain.

Don't bother with it if you come here. It's franchise based here so it's extremely hit or miss. When I ate chicken I just went to Popeyes, which is also hit or miss, but leans heavily towards hitting while kfc leans heavily towards missing. Also just way better when it hits.

Its always been shit as far as I remember.

Pretty much every American fast food chain from the 80s and 90s has enshittified.

A new crop has come up that's more similar to the old quality of those places, Chipotle, Five Guys, etc.

But even Chipotle went a good bit downhill.

Of course this all varies by location. Once in awhile you find a location where the workers and/or owners actually care a bit, and you catch a glimpse of what these are supposed to be.

Yarp

Im in the US. KFC is not very high quality but somehow the price is nearly the same as a local fried chicken restaurant. Also. The dining rooms are always dirty -- like really dirty. Ive never gone in to order food from KFC and felt confidence that I wouldnt catch hepatitis. This is the universal KFC experience I've had from the East to the West Coast and a couple of states in between.

And like others have said -- there's better quality, less expensive fried chicken to be had from local grocery stores.

Yes. Japanese kfc puts it in the dirt.

KFC has been low tier chicken for a while now, Popeyes chicken is where it at now

Incredibly overpriced. A bucket of greasy ass chicken is like 30+ dollars. I don't know how they're still in business.

grew up in USA, KFC is dogshit. Tried it in Japan recently and it was exactly the same as USA.

any USA grocery store has way better fried chicken than any KFC

In South East Asia KFC, Burger King etc. aren't seen as cheap food for poor people. Poor people can't afford to eat there. Also, people in general are much more discerning about their food, so if you try to feed them American slop, they won't buy it. That's why all those fast food chains offer better quality there.

KFC in the US is terrible and has been so for at least 20 years.

As someone from Germany living just around the corner from a KFC, I can safely assure you:
It's garbage and overpriced here, too.

It wasn't always but, like most everything else, it is now.

Overpriced: yes

Garbage: subjective and really depends on which location you go to and what time of day.

The bottom line in the states is that the people working at KFC are getting paid minimum wage so they typically put in minimum effort. KFC can be good if you catch the right employees making it at the right time...

The KFC near me in the U.S. wasn't bad, I haven't eaten out at all since the pandemic. Maybe because it was usually busy at lunch when I went, all the food was fresh. I used to get a breast, a side, a drink, and a cookie for $5, that was a decent lunch. If I went in outside of busy times, yeah, the food had obviously been sitting around for a while, but it was still good enough for five bucks.

Like all fast food, the quality can vary considerably from store to store, and region to region.

My kids had been asking to try KFC for a while before I tried it a few months back. Spent like $100 on straight garbage. We never went back. Everything tasted like it was made 3 hours ago and sat in warming drawers drying out.

As someone who lives in the Netherlands... The quality is mid at best. Oh and it's fucking expensive. But all fast food has become expensive.

No one in my friends circle eats there. Many better options

KFC is successful in Japan because they invented the tradition of eating KFC fried chicken during Christmas.

No joke, Christmas bookings for KFC are booked out months in advance, and people wait in long queues out the door on Christmas.

What's the deal with KFC and Christmas in Japan? | Time Out Tokyo - https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/things-to-do/whats-the-deal-with-kfc-and-christmas-in-japan

It's fine. It's never been great. If I've got a fried chicken craving and can't be bothered to drive to a Popeyes, Raising Canes, or Guthrie's (a smaller chain similar to Raising Canes), I'll stop by and grab a bite. It gets the job done. But it's not amazing, no.

It's dog shit tier in NZ, but you're paying a premium for the privilege.

We even have a term: KFC-remorse. For when you craved it, ate it, regret it.

Yes. I remember it being good as a kid, but hadn't eaten there in a long time. Then I tried it again a few years ago and it was awful

KFC around me is overpriced and shit

Garbage?

I dunno if I'd go that far. Overpriced for what you get? Absolutely.

The problem with kfc now is the consistency. Other comments have made note of that already.

In the past though, it was consistent. And it was, on average, middle high tier back then. Breasts would be juicy still, and the various breading versions were good enough to be cravable, if not as good as home made or from a non chain restaurant.

The extra crispy was reliably extra crispy in particular.

Somewhere in the nineties, it started falling off. Greasier, drier, with the grease also tasting unpleasant (as compared to previous from kfc where the off taste wasn't present)

Fried chicken isn't really that hard to get right when you have good fryers. The kind they use hold heat really well by virtue of how much oil they hold. So the fact that it's ever greasy instead of lightly oiled on the outside is a sign they're doing something wrong. If you had a fryer like that at home, you should be able to turn out amazing fried foods every single time. Even shitty home fryers can get the job done if you do small enough batches. Hell, in that regard even pan frying in your old cast iron can do better than what kfc started becoming in the 90s assuming you kept your batches small.

All of that being said, it is still at least edible. The company just lost being good the way it used to be. It was never great, but it was something that was worth getting once a month on a sunday.

But it isn't just the chicken that's gone downhill. Most of their sides have gone meh to bad. Their gravy is pretty much the same, but they changed something about the mashed potatoes back in the late 90s to where the texture is just not pleasant. Their biscuits were always mid at best, but they're always too greasy now. I suspect they changed the source of their shortening, or their source changed how they make it. That suspicion comes from having known enough workers to be confident that the recipe itself is unchanged.

The other sides (with one exception) are not good. Edible, but you'll regret it. The slaw is still sometimes good to great. It used to be consistently good to great. I'm not sure what they changed, unless it's in storage or batch size, but it usually has the slightly rancid or fishy scent to it now. Slaw is pretty hard to fuck up (though also hard to make really great), so it points to the whole chain having shifted to lower standards across the board.

Never been outside the country at all, so I can't compare in that way. But it's always been popular here in the us, so I've had it up and down the eastern seaboard.

Pretty much junk in the UK, there's nearly always a better local independent chicken shop. Though I think the last time I had KFC in America was about 2002, so I've not got a recent frame of comparison.

The UK one is edible, but I basically only choose it when options are otherwise quite limited

I’ve recently tried KFC in Southeast Asia too during a random craving. The chicken itself tasted juicier, more flavorful, better quality. That goes even for the breast. And they even had a spicy kind, with a real kick. I think US chicken has too many steroids so the meat doesn’t taste as good.

You can make your own healthier delicious fried chicken with some YT tutorials and a lot of surfing on the internet. Taste will be same or better than these junk food centers