Brand Image & Local Initiatives
Whilst many see KFC as one of the UK’s if not one of the world's leading restaurant chains, all of their sites are managed by a much smaller group of people than you’d think!
When the news hit the Chorley area that KFC was coming to Buckshaw Village, it’s fair to say the reception on this wasn’t massively in favor and residents began taking to social media to express their frustration with many believing this would impact the image the village had.
Brand Image
From conversations we had with the 1st Rate Investment Team who were behind the restaurant and many others across the North West, it was clear they had a wealth of experience and had a clear vision for how they’d like to store to look, operate and sit within the community.
Following our initial meetings, we put together a plan to bring residents onside and to see that, yes KFC is an international brand but through the new site, they were looking to:
Employ local people
Support the community
Invest in local initiatives
Provide great food to all
Creating A Local ‘Finger Lickin’ Buzz
After extensive research on social media to answer a lot of issues local residents raised, we worked with the KFC team to strengthen their local brand image and ensure questions were not left unanswered!
One major piece of feedback we came across was that local people felt they weren’t being included in the plans, to counter this, a Buckshaw Village resident was given the opportunity to open the restaurant and following this, he and his family joined the team for the first ever meal served!
What’s the stores message?
This was split into two categories, inside the store and in the public…
Inside the store, we worked with the team to ensure the signage gave the right message to residents by both welcoming them in and ensuring they saw the great work the team had done in setting everything up.
Outside the store, we used the powers of social media and the Friends of Buckshaw Village Community Magazine to share progress images of the restaurant being built, sharing updates from the team and ensuring that the faces of those they’d be seeing when they popped in to order would already be recognisable.
Local Initiative
We always had the idea of wanting to produce something we could give away to residents and after a few conversations with the KFC team, we put our heads together and came up with a high quality tote bag which on one side read, ‘What’s Cluckin Buckshaw Village’ and the other ‘I’m A Friend Of Buckshaw Village - Promoting Local, Supporting Local’.
The advertising campaign was a roaring success and hundreds of bags were hand delivered free of charge to residents across the village, all they had to do was fill in a form in our community magazine or visit our website and complete the registration there.
This acted as a great advertising strategy for the store and many residents felt that the restaurant were really going above and beyond to give back to their new community.
The result from working with Green Man Marketing: In the first 3 days of opening, the restaurant was the highest grossing KFC in the whole of the UK & Ireland!
In the first week alone, the team hand-breaded over 8,000 pieces of Original Recipe Chicken and over 10,000 mini fillets!
Many of the residents who were initially against the opening of the restaurant were brought on side and it remains really popular ever since!
