Why didn’t the chicken cross the road?
In the United Kingdom, the answer is there aren’t enough of them to cross — and that’s bad news for the 900 KFC restaurants there.
The fast-food chain once known as Kentucky Fried Chicken is engulfed in a crisis in the U.K., where about two-thirds of its restaurants are temporarily closed amid delivery challenges.
The cause? A chicken shortage — coming at a chain whose core product is chicken.
Trying to make light of the situation, KFC referenced the old-fashioned riddle joke in a tweet.
“The chicken crossed the road, just not to our restaurants,” KFC’s United Kingdom and Ireland outfit said on Twitter. “We’ve brought a new delivery partner onboard, but they’ve had a couple of teething problems — getting chicken out to 900 restaurants across the country is pretty complex!”
The chain promised not to “compromise on quality, so no deliveries has meant some of our restaurants are closed and others are operating a limited menu or shortened hours.”
Only about 300 were open as of Monday morning.
The situation was not expected to affect the U.S. market. KFC spokesperson Tori Oman said it was an “isolated issue” in the U.K. that the company is working hard to rectify.
“We want to thank our incredible restaurant teams, who are working flat out all hours to get us back up and running again,” Oman said in an email.
The exact cause of the delivery problems was not immediately clear, but the U.K.’s Guardian publication reported that KFC blamed the episode on delivery service DHL.
Oman did not address a USA TODAY inquiry on the potential DHL connection.
But DHL acknowledged a problem. “Due to operational issues a number of deliveries in recent days have been incomplete or delayed,” the company said in a statement. “We are working with KFC and our partners to rectify the situation as a priority and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
Yum Brands-owned KFC had 21,487 restaurants worldwide as of the end of 2017. Sales at U.K. KFC stores rose 5% in 2017.
