Australians could soon order a chicken feed from their cars and run in to pick it up, skipping the lines and annoying those standing there, with an app the company is working on.
Similar to apps available from other fast food vendors, the KFC Xpress app is the Colonel’s first mobile software solution that allows customers to select a local store, order the food, and pay without having to resort to standing around waiting for that person in front of you to stop talking.
“Australia has one of the highest smartphone penetrations in the world, with more and more consumers shopping and paying on the go,” said Valerie Kubizniak, Chief Marketing Officer of KFC Australia.
“The KFC Xpress mobile app is one example of how we’re innovating the store experience to meet the changing needs of our customers.”
Currently, the KFC Xpress app is being tested only in Tasmania, with the program working at all of Tasmania’s 15 stores, though Kubizniak says it will be brought out to other parts of Australia, telling GadgetGuy that “we wanted to make sure our stores and staff had the right training and technology so our customers can have the best mobile ordering experience at our stores.
“We have thousands of loyal and tech savvy customers going through our Tassie stores each day, giving us the perfect market to launch this initial phase.”
As for the question of why it’s only available on Apple’s iPhone – which is something we’re sure owners of other platforms in Tasmania are asking – KFC says it will be coming to other operating systems later on, as well as a website version so that everyone — regardless of mobile device — will be able to experience the thrill of ordering chicken and chips from a browser, any browser.
“At the moment, mobile apps are more consistent in providing a fast and responsive user experience,” said Ms. Kubizniak.
“For the future we are working on a mobile website (HTML5) version of the app to provide broader access to the mobile ordering experience. We believe with increasing bandwidth to the phone, this will ultimately be the best way to deliver the solution to the widest audience.”
Australia is one of the first places in the world for KFC to launch such a service, and the company expects that more stores will support the technology later this year.
A part of us wonders if KFC will some how embrace NFC to make a KFC Near-Field Chicken deal. Standby for wireless chicken.
