Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Cus­tomers were served with a price and menu ad­just­ment at some fast-food restau­rants from yes­ter­day.

Just be­fore re­open­ing its doors to wel­come cus­tomers, KFC an­nounced that a lim­it­ed menu will be avail­able un­til to­day. Cus­tomers will on­ly be able to buy chick­en, fries and sand­wich­es. How­ev­er, the re­al sur­prise was an in­crease in the prices of meals.

Some meals went up by $2 while oth­ers went up by as much as $10.

Group Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of KFC’s par­ent com­pa­ny, Pres­tige Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, Si­mon Hardy, told Guardian Me­dia it was a move that could not have been avoid­ed.

“Since the pan­dem­ic, there has been such dis­rup­tion to the sup­ply chain and so on. We have ex­pe­ri­enced some sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in our in­put costs. For ex­am­ple, oil has gone up 30 per cent in the last few months but the largest dri­ver of the price of chick­en is grain like corn or soy­bean and those have gone through the roof,” Hardy said.

Some cus­tomers were not pleased with KFC’s an­nounce­ment, while oth­ers said it did not mat­ter to them since they were hap­py to spend time in the kitchen. But there were some who took to so­cial me­dia to say they were not con­vinced the price in­creas­es and lim­it­ed menu are enough to keep peo­ple away. This point was con­firmed by Hardy.

“We are see­ing a lot of peo­ple buy­ing buck­ets. I guess af­ter not hav­ing it for two and a half months, peo­ple are just ea­ger to get it again,” Hardy stat­ed.

He not­ed that the com­pa­ny con­tin­u­ous­ly re­views its prices and once able to, cus­tomers will ben­e­fit from ei­ther re­duced prices or spe­cials.

One KFC work­er said she felt like “it was her first day back to school.”

Speak­ing un­der anonymi­ty, an em­ploy­ee at one of KFC’s Port-of- Spain branch­es said it ap­pears cus­tomers are opt­ing for de­liv­ery. At one out­let, there were more than 60 de­liv­ery re­quests by noon yes­ter­day.

Cus­tomers will al­so have to pay slight­ly more to bite in­to some Church’s Chick­en meals.

“We made mi­nor ad­just­ments like a dol­lar or two dol­lars for the most but noth­ing dras­tic,” Aaron Paul, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Church’s Chick­en in Mar­aval, said.

“Qual­i­ty and some prices will re­main the same,” he added.

Paul said he and staff at the Mar­aval branch were ea­ger to be vac­ci­nat­ed and ready to op­er­ate.

At More Vi­no restau­rant, cus­tomers were re­joic­ing over re­duced prices. The restau­rant post­ed a no­tice to cus­tomers an­nounc­ing it had tak­en the de­ci­sion to re­duce prices. The restau­rant said it un­der­stands the pan­dem­ic has been dif­fi­cult not on­ly for restau­rants but for cus­tomers, many of whom have suf­fered a re­duc­tion in in­come.