Forget Apple Pie, Chicken is All-American
It’s no secret that Oprah is a market mover (as Wal-mart is a marketplace).
So when she promoted free grilled chicken at participating KFCs, I already knew that there was going to be a bottleneck in system (classic operations management dilemma). “As American as apple pie” really isn’t accurate. “As American as fried chicken” is way more applicable.
So here’s a quick rundown of some of the obvious system points …
1) oprah.com/kfc seemed to handle all the traffic
2) unthinkfc.com (the target site directed from oprah.com/kfc) seemed to do okay
3) bricks.coupons.com…(the site where you actually printed the coupons) was overwhelmed.
4) the KFC outlets were overwhelmed, having run out of chicken and subsequently issuing rain checks. Duh! It didn’t matter that people had until May 19 to go to KFC…people were going to hit the outlets as soon as the coupons were printed out. I just assume that KFC planned to issue rain checks.
When I used coupons.com, it timed out due to demand. I kept refreshing my browser. But when I finally got back on, it said that I exceeded my allotment of coupons (4).
I wasn’t upset, since my wife and I were curious about the KFC dish, but generally equate KFC with fried chicken (and don’t eat it…I’m sure this “expansion of the KFC brand” was one of the factors for the promo).
If for nothing else, coupons.com will use this information and set up some more servers and try to lower the switching time the next time they get a market mover like Oprah.
