PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Sales at one of the coun­try’s most pop­u­lar fast food fran­chis­es have plateaued due to job loss­es and gen­er­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty in T&T.

This was con­firmed by Roger Ramb­harose, KFC and Piz­za Hut’s vice-pres­i­dent when asked about the fried chick­en gi­ant’s sales in this coun­try yes­ter­day.

“We have seen a bit of a slow­down in the last cou­ple months. I think con­sumer spend­ing, in light of every­thing that is go­ing around—the so­cial and po­lit­i­cal is­sues—per­sons are be­ing a bit cau­tious. How­ev­er, brands like KFC, we tend to ben­e­fit to some ex­tent, be­cause we of­fer every­day val­ue. We of­fer great in­no­va­tions and per­sons come to the brand for com­fort. So we see it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty and a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, at the same time that we need to pro­vide even bet­ter val­ue for our con­sumers, es­pe­cial­ly in dif­fi­cult times,” said Ramb­harose fol­low­ing the launch of KFC’s Krunch-ni­val cam­paign on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, in front of the brand’s In­de­pen­dence Square branch.

Ramb­harose added, “Gen­er­al­ly traf­fic on the whole, we have seen not a sig­nif­i­cant fall off (com­pared to the) pri­or year, but more of a flat­ten­ing of traf­fic, ob­vi­ous­ly, (with peo­ple hav­ing) less mon­ey, a lot of un­cer­tain­ty with job loss­es and so on. But yes, we have seen a bit of a flat­ten­ing of the num­bers year on year.”
Ramb­harose al­so dis­closed the brand had no plans to close restau­rants, adding that it had no plans to open any new lo­ca­tions ei­ther, as he con­firmed the chain had strug­gled to man­age the for­eign ex­change short­age in the coun­try.

The Crunch-ni­val launch came just over a cou­ple weeks af­ter the fast food chain put up a cryp­tic so­cial me­dia post stat­ing it was not cel­e­brat­ing Car­ni­val. The event fea­tured a faux press con­fer­ence ad­dress­ing the posts and the brand’s in­ten­tion to be ma­jor part of Car­ni­val 2026.

Dur­ing the event, Ramb­harose al­so spoke about the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try, not­ing that KFC felt it had an added re­spon­si­bil­i­ty giv­en the cli­mate.

“In 2026, it will be a year of val­ue and in­no­va­tion for the KFC brand. We know it’s go­ing to be a tough year. We saw every­thing, and we have been see­ing a lot has been go­ing on. But just know KFC is here for you in good times, in bad times, in dif­fi­cult times,” he said.

Ramb­harose ex­plained, “We start­ed the hype a cou­ple weeks ago when you saw some odd posts com­ing up, com­ing out of a KFC not cel­e­brat­ing Car­ni­val. It’s all with a build up of the launch with De­stra and Yung Bred­da and in­ter­twin­ing their brand and their vibe in­to the KFC,” said Ramb­harose, who added that the com­pa­ny reg­u­lar­ly in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in­to Car­ni­val and 2026 would be no dif­fer­ent.

He said, “We are look­ing for­ward to a phe­nom­e­nal Car­ni­val 2026, in light of every­thing that is go­ing on around us. Well, nor­mal­ly, we would spend around $500,000 eas­i­ly for any Car­ni­val-type cam­paign. So it could go with ac­ti­va­tions with dif­fer­ent fetes. It is a quite a sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment.”

Dur­ing the event, Ramb­harose al­so spoke about the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try, not­ing that KFC felt it had an added re­spon­si­bil­i­ty giv­en the cli­mate.

“In 2026, it will be a year of val­ue and in­no­va­tion for the KFC brand. We know it’s go­ing to be a tough year. We saw every­thing, and we have been see­ing a lot has been go­ing on. But just know KFC is here for you in good times, in bad times, in dif­fi­cult times,” he said.

KFC, along with Piz­za Hut, Sub­way, TGI Fri­days and Star­bucks, fall un­der the um­brel­la of Pres­tige Hold­ing, which is still sub­ject to a takeover bid by the Agos­ti­ni group. While Agos­ti­ni ac­quired the min­i­mum tar­get shares to com­plete the takeover since Sep­tem­ber, the of­fer has been ex­tend­ed nu­mer­ous times due to the in­abil­i­ty to se­cure reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals in the ab­sence of a board of the Fair Trade Com­mis­sion.