KFC is moving its headquarters out of its Kentucky home, heading for Texas
There are more KFCs per person in Kentucky than any other state. The company’s moving anyway.
KFC — formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, until the company officially changed its name to its current initialism in 1991 — is taking the K out of KFC, as the fast-food chain plans a move out of its spiritual and physical home.
The transition comes as its parent company, Yum! Brands, plans to relocate the business to one of its two brand headquarters in Plano, Texas, per an announcement yesterday. The company’s other subsidiary, Pizza Hut, will also join KFC to move to the Lone Star State, while Taco Bell and Habit Burger & Grill will remain headquartered in the Irvine, California, location.
The move is a big one for a company associated so strongly with the state. Indeed, Kentuckians still seem to love the chain: there are 114 KFC restaurants in Kentucky, which, according to our calculations, is equivalent to ~25 KFC restaurants per million people. That’s the most KFC restaurants per person of any state.
Texas, by contrast, ranks pretty middling on our KFCs-per-million metric, coming in with 10.35 KFCs per million people.
Other KFC hot spots include Mississippi, West Virginia, and New Mexico. Eastern states like New Jersey and Massachusetts rank bottom, with just 6.2 KFCs per million New Jersey residents.
