從《歐普拉》到兩隻雞腿: KFC Spectaculum

從《歐普拉》到兩隻雞腿: KFC Spectaculum
顧裕光

　　Last week (May 5th, to be exact) our friend Richard emailed to tell us that Oprah 歐普拉, the number one TV talk show host, announced on her show that she was offering a free meal at KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) for every American. Just log on to her web site, click to the free meal offer to get the coupon.


　　As it turned out, this was not a joke. Oprah did make the offer. The coupon was available online from 9 am May 5th to 10 pm May 6th, in a 37-hour span. This cannot match with Opera's Christmas show where she gives away good stuff every year, or her "everybody gets a free car" give-away in 2004. But times are hard and a free meal is a free meal. This cheap offer caused quite a sensation for the masses.


　　Of course internet was totally jammed. Hours later I finally was able to log on to the coupon page. It told me to download a printer software then hit Print. I did, but it didn't. After another hour or so I gave up.


　　Two days later in the mail I received two coupons from Richard (each person can print up to 4 copies of the coupon). How very generous of him! But at this time I noticed that the free meal coupon is only good for grilled chicken 烤雞, a new product that KFC is trying to push, not for fried chicken 炸雞. And it is only good from May 5 to May 19, except May 10 Mother's Day. That sure is harshly heartless. If a free Oprah chicken meal is all a person could give to his or her mother on Mother's Day, why should she deny it?


　　At any rate, we set out yesterday for our free KFC lunch. Do you know how hard it is to find a KFC restaurant nowadays? There are no KFC in Altamonte Springs at all. We had to drive more than 5 miles to the next town to find one.


　　A poster on the door got our attention. Something like, Sorry, but we can't give you your free chicken meal today. We'll give you a rain check for a later date.


　　Inside the store, the poor girl (we were pretty hard on her) told us we needed to fill out a form and either mail it in or give to the store, along with our coupons, and in the length of unknown time, we'll receive the rain check from the headquarters of KFC. On principle, I would like to just walk out. This whole thing seemed to be a set up. But we took the effort to come here, and I do have a soft spot for fried chicken. So we decided to stay.


　　We had quite a few things to talk about over the chicken lunch:


1) Is the economy so bad that Oprah thought she needed to give away a free meal in order to help? How much can one meal really help anyone?


2) Certainly Oprah is not paying the retail price for millions of the free meals. Probably she pays just a dollar each? KFC gets huge publicity. Could it be even possible that KFC pays Oprah just to use her name?


3) We saw it in the news that in certain KFC restaurants in New York, angry customers staged a sit-in boycott because the restaurants ran out of chicken. So the publicity was not all that good for KFC after all.


4) The coupon was only available online. A person has to have access to a computer and printer, and has enough technology know-how in order to download and print out the coupon. So the free meal deal was aiming at middle-class office workers, not blue-collar workers or the real down-and-out poor people.


5) We have noticed that KFC restaurants are disappearing fast. In the 5-year span since we moved here, 3 near-by (near enough anyway) KFC closed their doors. Americans are not eating fried chicken any more? KFC changed their name (from Kentucky Fried Chicken to simply KFC) to avoid the word fried? Americans are as overweight as ever and there is no indication that there is a trend towards healthy food. We've noticed all the supermarkets we shop from (both here and in Chicago) have removed their salad bar. What is going on?


6) This free meal is for grilled chicken, a new product KFC tries to offer as a healthy alternative to the fried chicken. But just about every supermarket is now selling grilled chicken. Is there any market left for KFC?


7) When we first saw the sign at the storefront, we thought this sure smelled like a scam. We would have to pay for the meal, and wait for the rain check which may or may not arrive. And then we may or may not come back to claim the free meal. Meanwhile, the restaurant got a paid meal from us. It certainly didn't seem honest.


8) The form that the restaurant lady gave us was an open letter from the president of KFC, apologizing for the inconvenience and promising the rain check will also include a free Pepsi. Well, if the KFC president issued the letter, then I couldn't blame the individual restaurant. But this will cost a whole lot more for KFC to print the letter and to mail out the new coupon, not to mention upsetting many people (like me). Why didn't they foresee this problem? And, what was Oprah's reaction when she learned the results of this free meal deal? Surely she couldn't be happy about it.


　　So many questions, so few pieces of chicken. I had two chicken legs and I went home happy. I didn't even care whether they mail me the rain check for grilled chicken or not. Of course, paying full retail price for this lunch, I ordered fried chicken, not grilled chicken.