China has embraced the free market and Western fast-food chains for decades, with KFC among the first to arrive. For years, the fried chicken brand struggled with a less-than-positive image (even using a slogan like “It’s not that bad” on its product packaging). However, it has since recovered. Yum China, the country’s largest restaurant operator, owns KFC along with Taco Bell, Lavazza, and Pizza Hut.
Its star product? A pizza topped with a fruit that smells like rotten eggs: durian.
The “chicken killer.” In a recent interview with Fortune, Yum China CEO Joey Wat shared insights about the company. One quirky detail: Her son calls her the “chicken killer,” a nickname she earned because KFC China processes 1 billion chickens annually.
This statistic is significant, given that China’s 1.4 billion people consume 8 billion chickens yearly—KFC is a major contributor to that figure.
Market research. KFC’s turnaround in China is closely tied to its market research and marketing efforts, driven in part by Wat herself. She periodically spends two to three hours observing customer habits in her restaurants.
“So apparently, when kids eat the fried chicken, they eat it with the mashed potato,” Wat said, noting that Gen Z customers would dip their drumsticks into mashed potatoes and then into gravy. Armed with this insight, KFC removed the bone from its chicken and introduced a mashed potato burger with boneless chicken.
Some public places ban durians because of their unpleasant odor, which can linger in the air for days.
Pizza without pineapple. But Yum China doesn’t only sell chicken. It also operates Pizza Hut, where another unusual product has taken center stage. Wat observed that the best-selling pizza wasn’t the Supreme—topped with pepperoni, pork, beef, mushrooms, peppers, and onions—but the durian and cheese pizza.
Durian, a fruit native to Southeast Asia, is notorious for its pungent smell. Some public places have banned it due to its odor, which is often compared to a mix of cheese, rotten meat, skunk, sulfur, onions, and raw sewage. Despite this, the fruit is beloved in China, where its rich flavor seems to have captivated pizza lovers.
A star product. Pizza Hut sold 30 million pizzas last year in China, and astonishingly, every fourth pizza was a durian pizza. That’s a staggering number of pizzas topped with this divisive fruit—enough to rival pineapple pizza if it ever makes its way West.
Ultimately, the dominance of durian pizza in China, much like KFC’s boneless chicken with mashed potatoes, is a testament to the power of observation. For now, it seems to be working.
Images | Pinar Kucuk (Unsplash) | Dave Weatherall (Unsplash)
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