KFC's Beef-Flavored Chicken

El Pollo Loco, a (relatively) small chain of chicken joints, never passes on an opportunity to tweak KFC, its much larger rival. The latest was a slow pitch from KFC: it flavors its new grilled—chicken product with beef.

El Pollo Loco, acting on a tip from one of its Twitter followers, has gone crazy in response, with TV commercials and a Web site - BeefyChicken.com - ridiculing KFC for flavoring the marinade of its grilled chicken with "beef powder" and rendered beef fat. Here's one of the TV spots:

Yum Brands-owned KFC, which has 5,200 stores nationally and 11,000 around the world, advertises the product as containing "a new secret blend of herbs and spices." You can find the secret, though, by perusing the company's "ingredient statement" (pdf), where we learn that, besides chicken and beef, there are more than 20 other ingredients in the grilled chicken and its marinade. The top one: salt. Near the top: monosodium glutamate. KFC advertises the product as having "less sodium than our Original Recipe chicken," which is a little like saying that a donut has less sugar than a candy bar.

The ingredient disclosure - found on page 14 of the 37-page pdf file - is "more than adequate," Rick Maynard, a KFC spokesman, told the Los Angeles Times.

"Small amounts of beef flavors are commonly used in seasonings for many food products, for both restaurant and retail use," he added, and in this case, they amount to just 0.2 percent of the total seasoning. That's true. It's also true that the ingredient list contains stuff that will kill you faster than the beef flavors will. Nonetheless, KFC advertises the product as a "better-for-you option for health-conscious customers."

El Pollo Loco, with about 400 outlets in California and the Southwest, has also been dissing KFC's grilled chicken for not being actually grilled. It's cooked in ovens. Maynard's explanation: KFC cooks the stuff on "grill racks inside ovens" and insists that it tastes like "what comes off the backyard grill."

The chicken war heated up last month when El Pollo Loco reported that it has received calls to its toll-free line from the headquarters of KFC and Yum. The callers, according to El Pollo Loco, pretended to be Californians stating that they preferred KFC. But - whoops! - the caller ID revealed that the "customers" were calling from numbers in Kentucky - in fact, from the buildings that house KFC and Yum.

El Pollo Loco took to the airwaves with a TV spot, replaying the phony calls and humiliating KFC in the process.