The KFC China story: how Taiwanese businessman Tony Wang Tatung introduced a nation to fast food, and why there are no Chinese franchises overseas
- When KFC opened in Beijing in 1987, it was the first US fast food outlet in any communist country
- Tony Wang, who led the project, introduced new concepts, including hygiene and the art of queuing
It was a chilly November day in 1987 when an animated crowd gathered outside a new shopping centre a stone’s throw from Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Members of the international press corps and curious locals braved the blistering cold to witness a historic moment that would have had Chairman Mao Zedong spinning in his nearby mausoleum – the opening of a three-storey Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.
That was three years before McDonald’s entered the country. It was four years before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the American fast-food joint – with its white-haired Colonel Sanders sign and racks of golden fried chicken – was a first not only for China but for the whole communist bloc.
“On the opening day, 20 to 30 reporters followed me around wherever I went,” says Tony Wang Tatung, who led the venture.
The restaurant sent ripples through the country’s catering industry, says Wang, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the colonel when he smiles.
“The Beijing Evening News ran an article saying the toilet … was cleaner than the pond in a Chinese restaurant,” he says from his home in the Taiwanese city of Taichung.