KFC opens new, radically different restaurant in…
A new KFC restaurant in McKinney, Texas, is about a lot more than debuting a new design.
“This is the Kentucky Fried comeback made real in one restaurant,” KFC US President Catherine Tan-Gillespie told Fox News Digital.
The restaurant, dubbed Open House, serves as a testing ground for how the 75-year-old fast-food chain that Colonel Harland Sanders based would possibly modernize without abandoning the issues that made it well-known.
KFC’s problem isn’t essentially getting Americans to keep in mind the model.
It’s getting them to suppose about it when deciding what to eat today.
“There is a massive love for this American icon,” Tan-Gillespie said. But in the US, she added, “we tend to be thought about in people’s memories. We’re not actually being considered in eating moments of today.”
That pressure between nostalgia and relevance helped form Open House.
In developing the restaurant, KFC began with a query.
“We sat back and said, you know, if the Colonel were building a restaurant from scratch today, what would this look like?” Tan-Gillespie said.
KFC’s Open House, a next-generation restaurant, is pictured in McKinney, Texas, on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026. KFC
Ana Maria Basurto, left, smiles before speaking about a new KFC restaurant in McKinney, Texas, on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. AP Photo/LM Otero
A new KFC restaurant presents food and drinks before its official opening on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, in McKinney. AP Photo/LM Otero
The reply incorporates Art Deco and mid-century trendy influences alongside large glass home windows, digital ordering and drive-thru technology.
At the same time, the restaurant options foyer hosts, desk service, cubicles and outside eating designed to encourage clients to collect.
“For me, the philosophy is that we should be digital where it’s helpful, but human where it matters,” Tan-Gillespie said.
The menu follows a related philosophy: Hold onto KFC’s most recognizable merchandise while experimenting with how clients need to eat chicken now, Tan-Gillespie said.
Buckets and the chain’s unique recipe stay central, but Open House expands into tenders, wings, sandwiches, wraps and nuggets, along with new sauces, drinks, snacks, sweets and sides.
Breakfast is a component of the experiment, too.
Open House is scheduled to operate from 6 a.m. to midnight, giving KFC an alternative to check breakfast and late-night events that historically haven’t been a major half of its US business.
Updated choices are displayed on the drive-thru menu at a new KFC restaurant in McKinney on Tuesday. AP Photo/LM Otero
“We will see if those shoulder day parts work commercially for us and work for the guests, work for our team members,” Tan-Gillespie said. “If they don’t, we’ll cut them back. And if they do, then we can look to scale them nationally.”
KFC also selected McKinney with scalability in thoughts.
Tan-Gillespie described the Dallas-Fort Worth space as a fast-growing and aggressive restaurant market, while McKinney gives a combine of current KFC clients and shoppers the chain hopes to entice.
The suburban setting also provides KFC a check that might probably translate to related markets elsewhere.
The solar comes through the signal for a new KFC restaurant in McKinney on Tuesday. AP Photo/LM Otero
But even as KFC experiments with new codecs, flavors, technology and dayparts, Tan-Gillespie said some items of the model aren’t up for reinvention.
“Buckets of original recipe fried chicken should not change,” she said. “I think the things that should change is making sure that we expand into the ways that customers want to eat fried chicken today.”
And what would Sanders make of that steadiness between the KFC he created and the one the company is making an attempt to construct?
“I think he would feel really proud, actually,” Tan-Gillespie said. “I think he would say, ‘This feels like me. This feels like what I was trying to do.’ But for today.”
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