Why Did A Bunch Of Illinois KFC’s Suddenly Close This Week?

There's a chicken-fried mystery in Illinois.

According to WHBF/WMBD, multiple Kentucky Fried Chicken locations in Illinois suddenly closed their doors this week. This led to mass surprise layoffs.

KFC has 150 locations in Illinois. On Monday, 4 of them closed and recently, over a dozen locations have closed. This includes locations in:

• Pekin
• Champaign (2)
• Decatur (2)
• Rockford (3)
• Bartonville
• Bloomington
• Peoria
• Washington

The Washington location's 18-year-old manager, Andrew Bush, was on vacation in Tennessee when he got the call from KFC's Director of Operations that he had been terminated. Andrew felt like he was being "treated as if he had done something wrong".

KFC's parent company, Yum, didn't say much about the Illinois closures, giving the statement:

We can confirm that some KFC locations in the area have closed. The decision to close a restaurant is always difficult for both the franchisee and the brand. We appreciate the patronage of our loyal guests.

But according to Eat This, Not That, KFC's owner admitted earlier this year that the chain is "struggling" after major drops in sales. The brand is doing well in China and other countries, but it's sales have fallen in the U.S.

KFC's CEO credits some of that to hard competition and "value promotions" from other fast-food chicken chains. Chick-fil-A passed KFC as the favorite one of those years ago and Popeye's passed KFC in popularity last year.

The only Yum-owned chain (they also have Pizza Hut and The Habit Burger Grill) to do well in the last quarter was Taco Bell, with sales up 1%.