China has been open to free markets and Western fast food chains for decades, and KFC was one of the first. The brand carried a not-so-positive image for years (even using a slogan like “it’s not that bad” on the boxes of its products), but it’s slowly starting to recover. KFC is owned by the holding company YumChina, which is China’s largest restaurant operator and also owns brands such as Taco Bell, Lavazza or Pizza Hut.

And the country’s star product is pizza, which has an ingredient that gives off the smell of rotten eggs: durian.

chicken killer. Joey Wat is the CEO of YumChina and he recently gave an interview to Fortune where he shared some of the most interesting details. A curious point is that his son calls him the “chicken killer”; It’s a hard-earned moniker considering KFC China kills 1 billion chickens every year.

Beyond the anecdote, the data makes sense if we consider that China’s 1.4 billion population consumes 8 billion chickens annually. KFC’s contribution to this figure is quite large.

market research. This change in trend that has occurred in KFC in recent years has as much to do with Wat itself as it does with the market research and practices carried out by the marketing team. Why? Management often spends two or three hours sitting in their restaurants observing what customers consume most.

“When kids eat fried chicken, they serve it with mashed potatoes. Generation Z dips the chicken thighs first into the garnish and then into the sauce pot.” Knowing this, Wat decided they needed to get rid of the bone, and in addition, they introduced the boneless chicken mashed potato burger.

There are public places where durians are prohibited. This is due to a very strong, unpleasant odor that can linger in the environment for days.

Bad pineapple pizza. However, as we said, YumChina does not live on chicken alone. Pizza Hut forms the other leg of the group’s table in the country, and this is where an ingredient that seems disgusting at first glance comes into play. In this observation routine, Wat realized that the best-selling pizza at that moment was not the Supremme (filled with sausage, pork, beef, mushrooms, peppers and onions), but the cheese durian.

It’s a fruit native to Southeast Asia that’s banned in some public places but apparently drives Chinese consumers crazy. I haven’t tried it, but it looks like a spiked kiwi (or a large chestnut) and smells like a mix of cheese, rotting meat, skunk, boiled egg, onion, and raw sewage. But it seems to taste delicious, which seems to have captured the senses of Chinese consumers who love durian cheese pizza.

star product. Pizza Hut sold 30 million pizzas last year, and the funny thing is that a quarter of them were durians. There are many pizzas made with that fragrant fruit that would disgust even the most gullible Neapolitan. And if it spreads to the West, it could be direct competition for pineapple pizza.

After all, this dominance of durian pizza in China is the result of the observations of the company’s top management, as in the case of boneless chicken with mashed potatoes. And it seems to work.

Pictures | BorgQueen, Manchester, Missvain

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