KFC Opened “Original+” Concept Store in Collaboration with Baidu to Deliver
Digitalized Dining Experience
On the morning of April 25th, KFC opened its first “Original+” concept store as part of a collaborative effort with Baidu to be the first restaurant chain to offer services enabled by artificial intelligence. Located inside the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai, KFC “Original+” concept store offers consumers from all over the country high quality dining services and innovative dining experience. Micky Pant, CEO of Yum! China, Joey Wat, CEO of KFC China, and Wang Haifeng, VP of Baidu, attended the opening ceremony for the store.
Joey Wat, CEO of KFC China, explained that the store named “Original+” concept combing both Original Recipe chicken, which is a KFC classic, and new experiences in a place where customers can enjoy. Inside the store, traditional Chinese garden design and innovative technologies are integrated organically, and the customers are offered a continuum of digitalized experience from ordering, to paying, and to entertainment. This testifies to KFC’s determination to create enjoyable experience for the consumers. Inside the store, the consumers can place orders with Baidu’s Duer artificial intelligence robots, marking the first time that the robots are used for high-tech services in an everyday setting. The opening of the “Original+” concept store is yet another extension of Baidu’s foray into artificial intelligence. Wang Haifeng, VP of Baidu, stated that “Baidu will step up efforts to explore and innovate using artificial intelligence technologies to better service humans.”
Smart meal-ordering
In collaboration with Baidu, KFC has built the first store offering artificial intelligence experience including placing orders with Duer robots. With their advanced voice and speech recognition capabilities, the robots are able to take orders from the customers, thus offering the customers artificial intelligence-based services. This also marks the first application of an artificial intelligence device in a chain restaurant setting. The Duer robots bring the consumers high-tech ordering services and add to the fun of the entire dining experience.
At the same time, the “Original+” concept store has upgraded its automatic ordering machines. The design is now more stylish, and with the user-friendlier pages and easier operation, the machines cater more to the younger generations.
Futuristic audio experience
While offering smarter and more convenient ordering processes, KFC “Original+” concept store has enhanced the brand’s fun side by offering the consumers a series of specially designed entertainment experience. In terms of audio experience, stylish “Music Charging Tables” were designed, where the consumers can place their cell phones capable of wireless charging inside the charging area, so that while the phones are being charged, the consumers can enjoy a list of songs customized by BaiduMP3 for the store.
In addition, inside KFC “Original+” concept store, the customers can watch on the 360o screen a movie of a robot frying chicken. Filmed with holographic imaging technologies, the short movie features a Q-edition robot making Original Recipe chicken, as if through magic, from marinating, to manual breading, to tossing, and to frying. In real life, every single piece of Original Recipe chicken is manually breaded by a store employee and fried only after the order has been placed. The fun-filled holographic projection movie is also a good movie for young children, as they can learn new things through close-range exposure to new technologies.
Gardens on the Yangtze Delta
In addition to the experience enabled by various innovative technologies, the design of KFC “Original+” concept store itself is a major attraction.
Inspired by the sceneries from the four seasons in a typical ancient town in Jiangnan, the region south of the Yangtze River, the designers sketched out, in simple lines, green bamboos, flowers on window sills, moon-shaped doorways and pale-shaded walls and roof tiles. Great Wall grey, jade white and sophora japonica green were used as the anchoring tones to create, in combination with wood color and the color of black, a tranquil “new Chinese” space. Every pavilion and pedestal, and every brick and tree speak the poetic language heard only in classic gardens in Jiangnan.
Enjoyable new experience
Ever since it entered China, KFC has been trying to integrate into the Chinese culture, and its brand positioning has been changing with the times and upgrading constantly to keep up with the societal development and consumer needs of different times. Just like Joey Wat, CEO of KFC China, said in her opening ceremony speech, “Between the days preceding the Opening-up and Reform policy and today, the mentality of the Chinese population has gone through a sea change. The inner self has been liberated, and people care more about themselves, about enjoying simple lives and about returning to their true selves. Therefore, 2016 is the year that KFC has sought to offer a place to be yourself..” Last year, KFC launched mobile payment nationwide and led the way in creating “social payment scenarios.” And this year, it launched online the upgraded “Super APP” and led the way in creating “self-managed ordering scenarios,” thus offering the consumers access to one-stop services for their daily lives. All of these testify to KFC’s determination to embrace the internet and to provide the consumers with a comprehensive range of mobile services. And the ultimate goal is to make the restaurants a place where the customers can enjoy good food and good life at their ease.