Reimagining the kitchen experience of ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’
to build sustainable growth for tomorrows menu vision.
Approach
0.0 Setting the vision
Validate and refine KFC’s Menu Vision.
Outlining potential growth moves.
1.0 Creating a concept
Design a Kitchen of the Future prototype with zoning,
concepts and high-level opportunity areas.
2.0 Plan and specify
Plan how we will build and test i.e. through detailed specifications and rigorous business casing.
0.0 Setting the vision
In order to create a clear understanding of how the KFC’s kitchen work today, we built a map that covered a day in a life of a kitchen from restock early in the morning all the way to clean up and close down. This captures all the processes that happened front of house, middle of hose and back of house in order to provide the crispiest and freshest chicken to their customer.
To build this understanding of the current state including pain points, work-arounds and opportunities, the team and I visited 10± kitchen of different formats, interviewed staff, operators and 10 key stakeholders.
Play studio
We identified and ideated around 4 key ‘Jobs’ the KOF needed to do with our extended KOF team.
The 4 themes were:
- Reimagine the pack and collect experience
- Free the cook-line from capacity constraints
- Create a truly flexible middle of house
- Reimagine the flow of food through the kitchen
1.0 Creating Concepts
After the play studio, the design director and I sat down together and developed more than 100 ideas, taking inspiration from best in class experiences. We took those and turned them into 40± concepts and tied them together into potential Kitchens of the Future experience.
This is how our Miro board looked like with our 100 ideas
From concepts to experiences
We took all concepts and tied them together into potential Kitchens of the Future experiences, which we tested and iterated together with stakeholders.
We took the principles of business origami and turned it into an interactive canvas to understand how the Kitchen of the Future could work. Testing shifts around flows, processes, team members and movement, equipment placements and innovations.
The we ran a prioritization exercise to be further refined them and taken into Concept Testing with managers, kitchen operators engeniers and the brand department
2.0 Test, Plan and specify
We gathered all the concepts refined them and created a To-be interactive map, we used this to test the future concept with actual cooks and operators for desirability. To evaluate the concepts feasibility and viability we had expert interview with architects, kitchen and safety specialist and the commercial team of KFC. We also used those sessions to discuss kitchen layout, tech led equipment and push ideas forward.
The interactive kitchen prototype was an excellent way to package the work and have it accessible to everyone in KFC that we ended up refining the prototype and using it as the final deliverable.
This was just Phase 1 of our collaboration. Two months later, we embarked on another project titled 'Experience of the Future.' This initiative was all about envisioning the restaurant, drive-thru, and delivery experiences of the future for KFC
The kitchen of the future was built and tested in their testing headquarters. Today all renovated or new KFC in the UK built after 2022, have most of the new kitchen concepts
Client: KFC
Role : Service Design Lead, Prophet
Responsibilities : Run Interviews, Prep and run workshops, Go to multiple site visits, Build current and future state map, Concept cards & future kitchen prototype.
Duration : ±4 months, 2020
Core Team: Design director, a strategist, a Project Manager & myself