Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Pres­tige Hold­ing Si­mon Hardy has ad­mit­ted the com­pa­ny “got it wrong” when it de­cid­ed to charge KFC cus­tomers for condi­ments.

“We’ve had some very loud and pas­sion­ate feed­back from our loy­al cus­tomers as to the charge that we had in­tro­duced some weeks ago. I think we got it wrong in this in­stance. So we’ve lis­tened, we’ve changed our minds and we’re just get­ting back to wel­com­ing cus­tomers - all cus­tomers - to our busi­ness and this is just one oth­er thing to cel­e­brate in terms of re­open­ing of the busi­ness,” Hardy told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day hours af­ter the de­ci­sion to charge for condi­ments was re­versed.

The es­tab­lish­ment re­ceived heavy crit­i­cism on so­cial me­dia when it an­nounced the $2 charge for condi­ments on March 14. Yes­ter­day, cus­tomers said they were pleased with the re­ver­sal of the de­ci­sion.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain branch around lunchtime, where Je­mil­ia Levience said she was hap­py to be able to sit and share a meal with her best friend.

Sur­round­ed by sev­er­al con­tain­ers of condi­ments, she was asked if she was seek­ing to get her mon­ey’s worth, to which she said, “Of course! I work­ing for it.”

She said the last time she dined at a KFC was near the start of the pan­dem­ic.

Ra­jesh Har­ry­lal was en­joy­ing a meal with his wife af­ter com­ing in­to the cap­i­tal to con­duct busi­ness.

“I came from San­gre Grande. I’m en­joy­ing my KFC in town,” he said.

Com­ment­ing on the sev­er­al condi­ments on his ta­ble, he said, “We have every­thing. We don’t have to pay for it again.”

He was al­so grate­ful to be able to sit and en­joy his meal at the es­tab­lish­ment.

KFC chose not to op­er­ate as a safe zone when the pro­gramme was launched in Oc­to­ber 2021. That has since been re­versed with the abo­li­tion of the ini­tia­tive.

“This buy and go—be­cause when you trav­el dis­tance to come and you hun­gry you have to eat on the street! It don’t make sense,” he said.

How­ev­er, there were some on so­cial me­dia who were scep­ti­cal about the com­pa­ny’s about-face on the condi­ments. For them, the dam­age was al­ready done.

“I have not for­got­ten their in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty and dis­re­spect with the price rais­es dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and lack of condi­ments. I will sup­port lo­cal small busi­ness­es. They will nev­er get my $$$ ever again,” Si­mone Clement said on CNC3’s Face­book page.