KFC chicken be shrinkin'

KFC got real bad in the past twenty years.

Their bucket used to be filled up to the 80% mark with fried chicken. Got a bucket 10 years ago and not only did the bucket shrink, but the chicken barely hit the halfway mark.

Popeyes has been the go-to. And weird to say, but supermarkets have picked up the fried chicken slack as well, if you aren't graced with a Popeyes.

whenever I read posts like this I just have to wonder: How many frickin' fast food chains are there in the US?
- The US is comparable to all of Europe,. In addition to national chains there are ton of regional (small number of states) and local chains (generally within one state). Fried chicken is extremely popular.
  
  So probably hundreds of fried chicken fast food chains exist even if there are only a handful that are nationally known.
- The US is huge dude.
- Im not from the states but I know regional chains are also a thing. Theres some places that only really exist in one state or one area of the country.
  
  Have a look at the Joshua Weismann videos on YT where he tries burgers from all the major chains he can think of. Pretty interesting.
- Extrapolating from prior statistics, somewhere around 200,000...
  
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/196619/total-number-of-fast-food-restaurants-in-the-us-since-2002/
- I mean, we kinda invented them 😂
- A lot. Just fried chicken chains are quite numerous:
  
  https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/largest-chicken-chains-us
- Oh man I could not even estimate. How many locations until it is considered a chain? There is a bar on my block that has a two other locations, is that a chain?
- It's one of their main cultural divisions.
- Think of your biggest number then triple it
I've tried several Popeyes locations and I've gotten half cooked chicken every time. I'm not a fan of gooey, medium rare chicken. I wish frying chicken at home wasn't such a messy pain in the ass.
- Wish granted! Air fryer fried chicken
  
  Personally, I use sous vide to cook the seasoned chicken at 155F for 90 minutes, then coat it in batter/oil mix, roll it in seasoned panko and put it in the air fryer at 450F for 10-15 minutes. No pot of oil or grease splattered all over the stove. Chicken is tender, juicy, well-seasoned, has a crispy, crunchy crust, and is never raw at the bone.
- I've eaten at Popeye's three times, and gotten food poisoning from them three times. Don't let it be said I can't take a hint. 🤮
  
  It's such a shame, because I've always liked his cartoons.
Royal farms is my current go to.
Cleo and Leo and Stater Bros is pretty damn good. KFC blows now, even their gravy has gone crappy

Based on the size and proportions of this, I'm guessing this is a drumette and not a drumstick. But, I'm also I'm not sure a photo of a single piece of chicken from a single order is really evidence of much of anything.

They have bone in wings now, and this is definitely one of them.
- ... Are you telling me you don't usually have bones in wings?
- That's not a wing, that's a drumstick. Can confirm, not only did I take the photo, I also ate it.

Shrinkflation on top of greedflation. They're just doing one thing after another to charge more for less.

What is this?

A drumstick for ANTS?!?!

So this is about kfc, so it's clearly an example of a corporation being cheap af and diminishing quality. But like, on the lighter more social side of things, I dunno. This kind of speaks to the fact that as Americans we have a totally distorted view of how big animals are. Also, we have no concept of what reasonable portion sizes are. I think smaller pieces of fried chicken is probably a good thing for most of us healthwise lol. Ideally, it would reflect more responsible chicken farming. I mean, this is kfc, so I know that's not the case here. But in general, I don't see any real downsides to smaller pieces of fried chicken. We eat too much as it is lol.

I have had fried chicken in other countries. This is too small. And in terms of portions you are way off base.
You don't see any downsides? If that's really a chicken leg and not quail or pigeon or some other smaller bird, then KFC must be killing underage chickens for the legs to be that damn small.

Go to Church's Chicken or Popeyes, or pretty much any other chicken place and the legs are easily twice as big and pretty clearly came from mature chickens.
- It’s a rat leg.
- Your reading comprehension needs some work. I explicitly said that this is clearly a case of diminishing quality, which could be attributed to the example you listed or any one of many other terrible corporate practices. Then I said in a social sense, I don't see a downside to the general idea of Americans eating less fried chicken. I was elaborating past the original point of the post.
I don't know if you've ever seen a chicken before but they are definitely not this small. This also isn't a reasonable portion size bro that's a penny.
KFC had hot wings for a while and this looks like one of them

I'd be concerned if this was a drumstick from the regular bucket, but for all I know it's a hot wing drumstick. Those are always small.

Not from US, so I don't know gow big a penny is: can you put something next to it as reference?

Need a banana.
A penny is 19.05 mm in diameter. Maybe you have a similarly sized coin where you are?
- US Penny is the same size as a UK Penny and Canadian Penny. Roughly the same size as a 2c euro
A US penny is almost the same size (.3 mm larger) as a €0.02 coin
About the size of your thumbnail would be a pretty close approximation.

maybe they can't use growth hormones anymore

they haven't been allowed for poultry production since the 1950s
- Interesting. I had just assumed they did but apparently they just get so big they can't stand up because of selective breeding. Maybe they're not using broiler chickens, then?
I've had a couple people suggest that ain't even chicken, more like a quail leg, but I swear this is the lame excuse of food we get from KFC here on the Gulf Coast.
- It is a chicken wing, the part closer to the body. Looks like a smaller version of the lower leg.

Maybe it's you who's growing 🤔

Its like my thumb what the fuck

It came from a whole 12 piece bucket of what the fuck?

This other thread on chicken inflation kinda bucks this trend but who's really right?

or maybe they're growing humongous chickens with teeny tiny bones?

https://lemm.ee/post/19155299

Toxic capitalism working as expected.

It’s all about the Bojangles