Kentucky for Christmas? How a fast food chain became a holiday hit in Japan

Kentucky Fried Chicken is a huge hit in Japan during the Christmas season, with lines just round the corner and huge sales. Japanese YouTuber Yoko Ishii took a look at Fox News at how the fast food chain has become a holiday phenomenon over the past 50 years.

KFC Japan scores Highest annual sales The numbers are during the run-up to Christmas, as December 24 marked the chain’s “busiest day of the year—10 times busier than the annual average for KFC Japan,” according to the company’s website. Ishii said she and her husband separately witnessed the huge lines in their hometown of Fukuoka.

Watch below to learn how KFC’s Japanese Christmas tradition gets started:

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“I was walking home, and I saw a KFC inside the big restaurant [train] “I was wondering, what’s going on?” Ishii told Fox News.

“I realized they were lined up in Kentucky for Christmas,” she said.

The US-based KFC chain of restaurants began operating in Japan in 1970 and launched The first Christmas themed Marketing campaign there four years later.

Ishii said she was familiar with the Kentucky Christmas motto when she grew up hearing it advertised on television. The campaign has its origins in an unknown foreigner who visited a KFC restaurant in Tokyo on Christmas Day sometime in the early 1970s. According to the KFC website.

“I can’t get turkey in Japan, so I have no choice but to celebrate Christmas with KFC,” the customer said, according to the KFC account. A member of the sales team at KFC Japan heard the note and used it as inspiration for launching their first Christmas campaign and slogan – KFC for Christmas.

Christmas dinner: Stuffed turkey thighs, roasted potatoes, and more

Kentucky Japan First Christmas dinner It consists of a bucket—known as a “barrel” in Japan—of fried chicken and a bottle of wine, along with the suggestion of eating the meal at a holiday party, according to KFC’s website.

Since then, the annual Christmas meal deals expanded. Many Japanese place Christmas orders with KFC months in advance, as lines at restaurants on the actual holiday often spill over into city streets.

People line up in front of a KFC restaurant on December 23, 2020 in Tokyo, Japan.
(Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images)

KFC Japan took in about 7.1 billion yen in 2019 (about $53 million in current US dollars), according to Shared Research.

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Many Japanese have embraced the commercial aspects of Christmas, although only about 1% of the population is Christian. Ishii said that the desire of the Japanese to absorb foreign festivities into their lives drove Kentucky to the success of Christmas.

“I think we’re just happy to celebrate whatever we can,” she told Fox News.

To learn more about how KFC created a permanent marketing campaign for Christmas in Japan, read on. click here.