KFC ranked worst out of 76 restaurant chains per new market share analysis
The chicken wars are taking their toll, new Barclays analysis suggests, as competitors close in on the chain that once ruled the roost.
Though it’s been rising steadily for decades now, America’s taste for chicken has really taken off in recent years: consumption keeps hitting new highs, it’s become a value option, and it feels like every major fast-food chain over the last year or so has hit a chicken strip-shaped panic button to revive sales.
A hole in the bucket
You might imagine all of that has been great news for Yum! Brands’ biggest chain, KFC, which counted roughly 33,000 restaurants around the world toward the end of last year. However, if recent US market share figures compiled by Barclays analysts led by Jeffrey Bernstein are anything to go by, you’d be wrong.
According to the new data, the “finger lickin’ good” chain, which traces its roots back to a motel in Corbin, Kentucky, almost 100 years ago, took a 15% share of sales in the US quick-service chicken restaurant sale sector back in 2019. Just five years later, that figure had slumped to 9.4%, as competitors like Dave’s Hot Chicken, Jollibee, Slim Chickens, and Wingstop have taken huge bites out of KFC. The latter of those, Wingstop, has done particularly well, having seen its market share jump from 4.8% to 8.4% over the same time frame.
Indeed, no other restaurant chain out of the 76 tracked by Barclays lost more market share than KFC in their respective cuisine and category (KFC’s being quick-serve chicken).
The report from Barclays won’t make great reading for Yum! execs elsewhere, either, with its other two major brands, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, also among the restaurant industry’s biggest market share losers, having shed 3.4% and 4.1% in their cuisine categories, respectively.
Meanwhile, Chipotle was the top gainer across all cuisines from 2019 to 2024, with its share of sales in the “Mexican quick service restaurant” area soaring 8.3%, even as signs that slop bowl supremacy might be starting to taper off emerge.
