For many countries around the world, Christmas is a big holiday for the whole family to gather together, enjoy a hearty party to celebrate the birth of Jesus. The Christmas party also has many different dishes depending on the place: baked turkey, salted pork leg, gingerbread, log cake, etc. As for the Japanese people, the dish Indispensable in the Christmas party is KFC fried chicken .
Every Christmas season, Ryohei Ando gathers with his family according to tradition. Just like his father used to do when he was a child, his two children will now also reach into the bag of red and white fried chicken and find the most delicious piece of fried chicken in the bag.
Yes, it’s the Ando family’s KFC Christmas.
Every Christmas season, about 3.6 million Japanese families will buy this type of fried chicken for Christmas parties.
This may seem strange to people who don’t live in Japan, but the Ando family and millions of others wouldn’t be able to bear to celebrate Christmas without Kentucky Fried Chicken, KFC.
Every Christmas season, about 3.6 million Japanese families buy this American-style fast-food fried chicken for their Christmas party, and this has become a nationwide tradition.
“My kids think it’s natural,” said Ando, 40, who now works in the marketing department of a sportswear company in Tokyo.
Of course, besides the millions of people who celebrate Christmas with KFC, there are many others in Japan who consider it a romantic occasion like Valentine’s Day, and couples mark it with an indoor dinner date. higher end products.
For some other Japanese families, Christmas is noticed but not celebrated in particular.
But for those who celebrate Christmas, it’s not as simple as walking into a restaurant and ordering food.
The demand for KFC fried chicken during Christmas in Japan is so high that many people are willing to queue for hours to buy it.
December is a busy month for the KFC chain in Japan – with sales in some places during the Christmas period possibly 10 times higher than usual orders.
To get the KFC Special Christmas dinner, people often have to order weeks in advance, and those who don’t pre-order will have to wait in long lines, sometimes hours.
Japan’s KFC Christmas tradition begins with an advertising story that any company targeting the Japanese market needs to learn, which is almost an anecdote this holiday season.
KFC was franchised in Japan to Mitsubishi Corporation in 1970, after more than 4 years of negotiations with the headquarters of this fast food chain in the US. In November 1970, the first KFC store in Japan officially opened in Nagoya. Not long after, two more branches of KFC opened in Osaka.
Before being as successful as it is now, KFC had a very bad start in Japan.
However, contrary to Mitsubishi’s expectations when bringing this popular fast food chain to Japan, the first KFC stores here did extremely poorly. After less than a year of operation, KFC Japan has lost more than 100 million yen. Even the first KFC store owner in Japan, Okawara Takeshi, had to sleep at the store to save money, because the sluggish business pushed him close to the brink of bankruptcy.
This frustration comes from the parent company in the US asking KFC Japan to set up stores in suburban areas, instead of in downtown areas as Mitsubishi’s original intention. Besides, a lot of Japanese people walking past the store don’t even know what KFC is doing. Some people even think that this is a candy store for children, because the red and white color is very bright and eye-catching.
According to KFC Japan spokesman Motoichi Nakatani, the tradition started thanks to Takeshi Okawara , the director of the first KFC store in Japan.
Shortly after the fast food chain’s first restaurant opened in 1970, Okawara awoke in the middle of the night and hastily jotted down an idea that popped up in his dream: selling a “party gift box” for Christmas. Born.
Okawara cherished the dream after overhearing a foreign couple in his restaurant talking about how much they missed turkey when Christmas came, Ms. Nakatani described.
Mr. Okawara hoped a Christmas party with fried chicken could be a good alternative, so he started promoting his “party gift box” as a way to celebrate Christmas.
In 1974, KFC planned to promote the product nationwide, and called it Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii , meaning Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas.
The project was an immediate success, and Mr. Okawara, who studied at Harvard University, also rose rapidly. He became the President and CEO of KFC Japan from 1984-2002.
There are also many other people in Japan who consider this a romantic occasion like Valentine’s Day.
The “party gift box” for Christmas almost immediately became a nationwide phenomenon, said Joonas Rokka, associate professor of marketing at the Emlyon School of Economics in France. He studied KFC Christmas Fried Chicken in Japan as a promotional campaign model.
“It filled a void,” Rokka said. “Japan doesn’t have a Christmas tradition, and then KFC showed up and said, this is what you should do during the Christmas season.”
The company’s Christmas meal ad shows happy Japanese families around a box of fried chicken.
More than just chicken breasts and chicken thighs, the party is transformed into a special family meal box filled with fried chicken, cakes and wine.
This year, the company is selling Kentucky Christmas dinners, ranging from a chicken box set for 3,780 yen (US), to a set of “premium” roasted chicken and ingredients. side dishes for up to 5,800 Japanese yen.
According to KFC, Christmas meals account for about a third of the chain’s sales in Japan.
Stores also redecorated the company’s visual character, the smiling Colonel Sanders with a white beard, now dressed as Santa Claus for the holidays. In a country that celebrates values with elders, the red-clad old man Sanders became an instant symbol of the holiday season.
This phenomenon is unique to Japan – and can be seen as strange to other countries. The idea doesn’t seem to be well received in the hometown of KFC’s fried chicken, says Kevin Gillespie, chef of two restaurants in Atlanta, Georgia.
“KFC for Christmas? It’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever heard” . Gillespie said. “If you brought a bucket of fried chicken to a Christmas dinner party, frankly, I would get mad at you.”
It’s not necessarily a KFC product breakout, Gillespie said. The basic idea of bringing fast food to a Christmas Eve party “would probably be considered rude by most people,” says Gillespie.
This phenomenon is unique to Japan – and can be seen as strange to other countries.
However, in Japan, where about 1% of the population is Christian, Christmas is not an official holiday, Rokka said. So the idea that the whole family would get together all day making bacon or turkey and toppings wasn’t exactly realistic. Instead, they gathered around a bucket of fried chicken.
“This is another sign of globalization, where consumer etiquette spreads to other countries and is interpreted in a completely different sense,” Rokka said. “It’s not unusual now to have Ikea stores around the world. The idea of KFC for Christmas is just to take consumerism and channel it into a holiday.”
Having traveled abroad many times, Ando knows his country is perhaps the only one that celebrates Christmas with a party with buckets of fried chicken. But he considers this a tradition rather than a corporate promotion.
With Ando, he still plans to buy KFC chicken for his children this Christmas. But he also went to the bakery to buy Christmas cake.
On Christmas Eve, the family will gather around a bucket of KFC fried chicken, just like the atmosphere Mr. Ando used to enjoy as a child, and which his children will do for their children too. .
“It’s like a symbol of family reunion,” Ando said. “It’s not about the chicken, it’s about the family getting together, and then the fried chicken is just part of the reunion.”