KFC recently celebrated their 30th anniversary in a way that most people weren’t expecting. The fast food restaurant chain recently teamed up with smartphone manufacturer Huawei to produce a limited edition phone in China. The phone is a 5.5-inch Android smartphone that is basically a Huawei Enjoy 7 Plus that comes with a few extra features provided by the famous Colonel’s influence.
The phone’s overall design has been influenced by KFC’s 30th anniversary as well, it has a nice vibrant red finish with an imprint on Colonel Sanders on the back and the phone comes with a special app known as K-Music which allows the users to choose which song gets played over the speakers of any of the 4,000 KFC outlets in China. The technology behind the phone is actually not bad for a phone that is supposedly a gimmick to promote the restaurant more, the phone has a Snapdragon 425 processor, 3GB of RAM, and can support MicroSD cards up to 128GB. As well as having a fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone, though I wouldn’t suggest using it after having one of KFC’s 8-piece meal.
The senior vice president of KFC marketing had this to say about the collaboration between the two companies, “Between KFC and Huawei…both brands have witnessed the rise of China in these 30 years. Our collaboration is a homage to the era.” This isn’t the first time KFC has started using technology in unison with their restaurants, earlier this year a KFC restaurant in Beijing began using facial recognition software to predict what a customer will order based on how they look. While it may not be the most efficient way to take someone’s order, it certainly is a very fun and creative way for KFC to make use of the new and growing technology. The software is designed to choose a suggested order by judging the supposed mood of the customer, as well as their age and gender. For returning customers the scanner remembers what they ordered last time and will suggest their favorites based on subsequent visits. This technology as unusual as it is, is part of another collaboration between KFC and the search engine Baidu (which is basically the Chinese version of Google) however, for those who live outside of China, don’t expect to be able to use KFC’s new menu technology or their new phone any time soon, but you can still enjoy all the delicious meals that KFC has to offer. Happy 30th KFC! You’re finger lickin’ good!
