KFC grilled by customer complaints

Published 6:05 pm Tuesday, June 27, 2017

KFC’s Greenville location has received no shortage of feedback from customers regarding service, cleanliness and a rather unsightly issue plaguing its parking lot.

A number of user reviews via services such as Yelp and Google Reviews trend toward the negative side.  The Greenville KFC location boasts 10 Yelp reviews with an average of 1.5 stars out of 5, while it’s 49 Google reviews average out to a rating of 2.1 out of 5 stars.

Yelp’s most recent review, posted on April 4, states “Never have chicken here. Every time we order they say, ‘Be 15 minutes for chicken.’ This is every time. Last time we went there it was 5:30/6:00 and they wouldn’t cook any chicken for us. Parking lot is full of potholes. Very outdated. Grocery store chicken is better.”

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Two weeks ago, user Jenn Brown left a very blunt critique via Google Reviews: “THEY RAN OUT OF CHICKEN.”

According to KFC management, one of those issues—the establishment’s parking lot—is being addressed soon. 

How soon, however, is up in the air.

KFC district manager Cesar Sarias, who is based out of an office in New Jersey, has served in his current role for four months following a transfer from another district.

In his four months serving the Greenville area, Sarias said that he hadn’t heard about many of the aforementioned complaints.

“The only complaint that we are working on is the parking lot,” he said. 

“We haven’t been able to get somebody over there to get that taken care of, but we’re working on that.”

“It’s going to take a while.  We’ll probably have to close the restaurant to get that fixed. We also want to get the right person to do the job, because it’s not an easy job that you can just go hire someone off the street to get that done.”

When asked about the other complaints received about the Greenville KFC beyond its parking lot, Sarias offered the establishment’s recent health department evaluation as evidence that the facility was headed in the right direction.

“The health department was recently at the store, and we scored a 94,” he said.

“When the officials at the health department go there, they spend anywhere between an hour to two hours looking at the operations of the restaurant. And we also have that available in the lobby right where people can see it.”

Critics of KFC’s customer service have not only taken to the internet, but to city hall, as well.

Greenville mayor Dexter McLendon said that the city has no current ordinance in place that would force privately owned lots or buildings to make repairs.

“While such a thing is not in place, I am disappointed,” McLendon said.  “It not only looks bad for KFC, but for our town, as well.

“We have made numerous attempts to contact the owners, both previous and current, of KFC to make them aware of the numerous complaints we’ve received regarding the condition of the parking lot. If anyone would like the contact information regarding ownership of the Greenville KFC location, we will certainly pass the contact info along.”