Does KFC discipline its staff for not getting enough customers to agree to donate R2 to its Add Hope charity campaign when they place an order?
The allegation arose with the posting on social media of a letter, purporting to be a standard “written warning” letter, the charge being “Failed to meet the Add Hope Target, made R12 with R7,504,80 sales”.
“This warning should be regarded as very serious and if you continue this unacceptable conduct it would lead to more serious action being taken against you.”
So is that a genuine letter?
On Thursday, KFC South Africa admitted it was, but the practice had only been adopted by one franchise shop, it said.
“Unfortunately, the allegations proved to be true,” the company said.
“One franchise shop has been threatening customer-facing staff whose orders don’t include sufficient Add Hope donations.
“This goes against the value and ethos of Add Hope, which we have worked hard to build over the past 15 years,” KFC South Africa said.
“Add Hope donations have and always will be voluntary. We chase hope, not targets, and thus Add Hope performance-based KPI’s (key performance indicators) should never be set for anyone.
“As a franchised business, we implement systems and processes to deal with incidents that do not align to our ethos and values and have taken immediate action to address this incident, specifically, with the (franchise) partner in question.
“We are also reminding our teams that a whistleblower line exists to report matters such as this.”
KFC Add Hope: one franchise added punishment for staffers not getting enough customers to say yes to R2 donation
Image: Supplied
Does KFC discipline its staff for not getting enough customers to agree to donate R2 to its Add Hope charity campaign when they place an order?
The allegation arose with the posting on social media of a letter, purporting to be a standard “written warning” letter, the charge being “Failed to meet the Add Hope Target, made R12 with R7,504,80 sales”.
“This warning should be regarded as very serious and if you continue this unacceptable conduct it would lead to more serious action being taken against you.”
So is that a genuine letter?
On Thursday, KFC South Africa admitted it was, but the practice had only been adopted by one franchise shop, it said.
“Unfortunately, the allegations proved to be true,” the company said.
“One franchise shop has been threatening customer-facing staff whose orders don’t include sufficient Add Hope donations.
“This goes against the value and ethos of Add Hope, which we have worked hard to build over the past 15 years,” KFC South Africa said.
“Add Hope donations have and always will be voluntary. We chase hope, not targets, and thus Add Hope performance-based KPI’s (key performance indicators) should never be set for anyone.
“As a franchised business, we implement systems and processes to deal with incidents that do not align to our ethos and values and have taken immediate action to address this incident, specifically, with the (franchise) partner in question.
“We are also reminding our teams that a whistleblower line exists to report matters such as this.”
KFC is the country’s leading fast food brand, by far, with more than 11-million patrons every month: one in four South Africans placed orders there last month, according to consumer insights and data firm Eighty20.
Of the 1,052 shops in South Africa, only 49 are directly owned by the company, with the other 1,003 being franchisee-owned, according to its owner Yum! Brands' financial results for the third-quarter of 2023.
In a widely shared and liked TikTok video, Johannesburg-based polygraph examiner Silke Kaiser claims not only that KFC staffers get warnings for “not collecting” the Add Hope R2 from customers, but that the donations do not fund meals for children.
“I got chatting to a lady [at a KFC] while I was waiting for my food. She had asked me ‘Would you like to donate R2?’. I said, ‘absolutely not; I believe it’s a scam’ … I asked her if she thinks the R2 is paid to the hungry children and she said ‘no’.”
KFC rejects this as false and says it can prove it.
The Add Hope website states KFC’s contributions, combined with the R2 donations from its customers, provide more than 30-million meals every year to children in South Africa.
“All proceeds raised through Add Hope go directly to NPOs which focus on ending childhood hunger through the Kentucky Fried Chicken Social Responsibility Trust.
“The name and location of each feeding centre is featured on the site.”
Responding to Kaiser’s video with his own TikTok, “Good Things Guy” Brent Lindeque said he’d visited some of the places benefiting from the Add Hope donations, among them Florence Khomo’s Sizanani Home Based Care Givers Project in Soweto, which feeds 450 children every day.
“Those donations go somewhere; they go to charities which are backbone of this country.
“People who spread lies like this on social media are incredibly problematic.
“The people who will lose out are those who rely on those donations to have a full tummy.
“A simple Google search will reveal how much impact that R2 has.”
TimesLIVE
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