Called Saucy, the new concept will offer a menu centred on sauces served alongside hand-breaded and fried chicken tenders made to order.
There will be 11 sauces available to choose from - a nod to KFC’s 11 herbs and spices - including chimichurri ranch, Creole honey mustard, and spicy mango chutney.
The wider food menu will include a selection of sandwiches, rolls, sides and desserts such as a spicy queso crunch sandwich; toasted Hawaiian rolls; and chocolate mousse cake.
There will also be a wide range of new drinks available including a hot honey watermelon refresher; peach-mango lemonade freeze; and tropical black tea.
“With Saucy, we’ve taken KFC’s famous Original Recipe and amplified it with a brand-new concept that lets consumers play with flavour,” says Christophe Poirier, KFC’s chief concept officer.
“You can pick a combo, choose a flight of sauces or, my personal favourite, mix sauces and sides to create your perfect meal.
“We’re sauce people, not math people, but we tried to calculate it and there seems to be over 4,000 different ways you could order at Saucy and have a different flavour experience every time.
“Saucy is unlike anything else in the market, and the experience it provides is in a class of its own. Being sauce-focused allows us to be as creative as we want.”
Saucy’s colour scheme ditches KFC’s familiar red for pink and, unlike its core brand, will offer live entertainment.
Orders will be taken either via digital kiosks, a mobile app, or a drive-thru lane.
The news comes as more and more restaurant operators on both sides of the pond explore the possibility for spin-off brands.
In the US, McDonald’s launched a small-format, drinks-focused spinoff concept, CosMc’s, in Illinois earlier this year; and Taco Bell launched its own drinks-focused café concept, Live Más, in Chula Vista, California.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Pizza Express has just cut the ribbon on a new supermarket carpark-based grab-and-go concept called Pizza Express Pod; Honest Burgers has launched its smash burger concept Smash + Grab; and Franco Manca-owner The Fulham Shore has just opened a crispy-Roman-style pizza concept called Super Club Roma.
