KFC's menu adds a new cheesy dish

The chain promises that its latest Smash'd Bowls will "smash your hunger."

Jan 30, 2024 - 00:30

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Over the last year, Yum! Brands (YUM) - Get Free Report-owned Kentucky Fried Chicken has taken several steps to modernize its menu with a combination of new items and revamped favorites from the past.

At the start of January, the fast-food chain has expanded the Chicken Twister Wrap it brought back a few months prior with three new flavors while some seasonal items over the past year included a fried chicken sandwich with bacon and barbecue sauce as well as the new Hot & Spicy wings.

This time, the new item launched by the chain is the Smash'd Potato Bowl: after running a few test launches in the Pittsburgh area last fall, KFC is officially bringing in the dish at locations nationwide from Jan. 29.

KFC launched the new Smash'd Potato Bowl on Jan. 29.

KFC launches new bowls it promises will 'smash your hunger'

The new item tops KFC's Secret Recipe Fries (regular French fries seasoned with the chain's signature combination of spices) with mashed potatoes, bacon crumbles and cheese sauce to either eat on its own or topped with five of the Kentucky Fried Chicken Nuggets. The regular bowl will sell for $3.49 while the one with nuggets has been set in price at $6.69.

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"Now you can smash your hunger with our new Smash'd Potato Bowls, which take comfort to an 11 with a unique twist on all your favorite KFC flavors smashed together," KFC's Chief Marketing Officer Nick Chavez, said in a statement. "If you like our Famous Bowls, you're going to love this new bowl."

As part of the menu expansion, KFC also launched a new $20 value combo featuring six pieces of KFC's Original Recipe chicken with sides such as mashed potatoes, coleslaw, corn, mac & cheese and four biscuits.

A brief history of the KFC bowl (as well as some other classics)

Over the years, KFC has played around with several versions of a bowl filled with some of the other items it sells. The Famous Bowls introduced in 2006 had a mashed potatoes and gravy base topped with corn, shredded cheese and fried chicken while in 2019 the chain replaced the base with the macaroni and cheese the chain normally sells as a side.

This version of the bowl proved particularly popular and KFC brought it back again in 2022.

"While most would agree that mac & cheese is good, a bowl of KFC mac & cheese topped with crispy popcorn chicken and even more cheese? That's finger lickin' good!" KFC said of the item at the time.

While the aforementioned Twister Wraps was probably the most requested KFC has ever brought back (there were multiple petitions demanding its return as well as some fans who tattooed an image of the menu item on themselves in "protest" of it being removed), the old-is-new again technique is one that the chain regularly falls back on to keep its menu fresh and fans on their toes for what is coming next.

In the summer of 2022, KFC briefly brought back the Double Down at some international locations — a viral monstrosity of a "sandwich" that replaces the bread with two pieces of fried chicken to hold pieces of bacon, cheese, and a mayo-style sauce.

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