KFC Closed 300
U.S. Locations Last Year

| published August 25, 2026 |

By Thursday Review staff

The iconic chicken restaurant KFC (once commonly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken), has shut down more than 300 of its U.S. retail locations in a 12 month period—the company’s most significant business contraction in decades.

For KFC, those 300 closures—which happened from July 2025 to July 2026—represent about 7% of its total store footprint in the U.S., as measured by several business sources and food service analysts. KFC remains the second biggest U.S. fast food chain after McDonald’s.

KFC’s struggles in the United States have been widely reported for a few years, and the chain has fought to retain customer loyalty in an era when Americans have been rapidly changing their eating habits, and as fast food companies like KFC have difficulty luring younger consumers into the restaurant. And like many restaurants, KFC faced significant challenges during the Covid19 pandemic, then, it faced more problems with hiring in the immediate post-pandemic era.

Many of the store shutdowns came as little surprise as U.S. sales have been sagging. States hit the hardest by KFC closings include California, which saw a net loss of 44 restaurants, Delaware, which lost 13, and Kansas, which lost nine. A dozen other states also saw a decline.

Conversely, KFC has continued to expand in overseas markets, and has had one of its best two-year flurries of opening new restaurants in countries outside the United States. Despite the loss of 300 stores in the U.S., KFC has opened at least 600 new stores worldwide, according to KFC’s parent company Yum! Brands, which is based in Louisville, Kentucky.

In addition to KFC, Yum! Brands also owns and operates Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Habit Burger & Grills, and Heartstyles. In 2021 Yum! Brands also bought a controlling interest in Israel-based Tictuk Technologies, an omni-channel food ordering, menu viewing, and food marketing platform, which Yum! Brands has been integrating into its massive business model.

The closing of many KFC locations in the United States may be linked to KFC’s sagging customer service reputation—for several years the chain ranks in last place for customer service value among chicken restaurants, far behind industry leaders Chick-Fil-A, and significantly behind Zaxby’s, Raising Cane’s, and Popeye’s. KFC has seen its sales decline for at least two straight years, down 5.2% in 2024, and down another 4.6% last year.

Over the past 15 years, KFC has experimented with menu changes and alterations to its menu in an attempt to retain customers and attract new diners, but the long term impact of these changes has been minimal.

But KFC plans to again alter its menu over the next one-to-two years, probably continuing to minimize or eliminate altogether traditional bone-in fried chicken in favor of boneless chicken, dip-able chicken strips, nuggets, and chicken sandwiches—just the sort of fare now so popular at Chick-fil-A and Zaxby’s.

Of all the major fast-food brands over the last 30-to-40 years, KFC has arguably made the most attempts to reboot and redesign its menu to accommodate shifting eating habits and consumer mood swings, tidal changes that were most often driven by new information about health and diet, and a growing disdain for fried foods.

This is of course an irony for KFC, which—after its 1930 founding in Corbin, Kentucky, and for decades afterwards—did not “fry” its fried chicken in a traditional sense, but pressure-cooked it using a patented system developed by Harlan Sanders and Pete Harman. For decades KFC also divided its chicken into nine cuts, as opposed to the more common eight pieces. Over the years KFC has tried different products with varying success, and among its most iconic side items are its mashed potatoes and its biscuits.

But this has not helped with KFCs struggles as Chick-fil-A and Zaxby’s have moved aggressively to develop impressive brand identities, cultivate new followings (especially among families), and crafted better customer service relationships.

In the meantime, Yum! Brands CEO Christopher Turner hopes that a major overhaul and rebranding will help KFC regain its footing in the United States, even as the chain expands rapidly in foreign markets.



Related Thursday Review articles:

7-Eleven to Close 640 Stores; By Thursday Review staff; April 15, 2026.

Whole Foods Opens New Stores in Florida; By R. Alan Clanton, Thursday Review editor; May 21, 2026.