Wealthy businessman Yang Lin fought dirty when a KFC branch ignored his complaint about hygiene while on business trip from Beijing to Wuhan.
Angry Yang spent 140,000 yuan, (£14,000), buying 2,000 family buckets at the branch in central China after staff did nothing when he complained about a chef preparing food without gloves or face mask.
He then began lining them up outside the shop entrance with signs warning people not to eat them because they were a health risk. But the store refused to give him any more food to him after 22 buckets.
He said he has been to many KFC’s in other countries and found them to be very strict in sanitation standards.
“I wanted to buy all their food so they couldn’t poison anyone else and I wanted to warn people what sort of food they were eating,” said 30-year-old Yang.
“I’m lucky to have made money in business so I can afford this protest. At first KFC wanted my money, but soon they were begging me to take it back,” he added.
Yang only agreed to end the bucket blockade after KFC managers in Wuhan, Hubei province, publicly apologised for their behaviour and agreed to improve staff hygiene.
“If they’d done that at the start they would have saved themselves a lot of trouble,” said Yang.
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KFC threatened a fast-food restaurant in China with legal action and forced it to change its name from Obama Fried Chicken to UFO, saying the logo infringed on its trademark rights.
The restaurant sign mimics KFC’s famous Colonel Sanders logo – but instead of the colonel, it’s Barack Obama dressed in a bowtie and suspenders, accompanied by the tag-line: ‘We so cool, aren’t we?’
The owners were forced to change the name from OFC (bizarrely, choosing UFO – although we don’t know quite why they’ve chosen that), but the copyright-infringing logo still remains.
The restaurant, which serves hamburgers, chicken pieces and chips, was set up in Beijing by three university students.
One of the owners, Zhu Baolai, decided to change the name after he became concerned that KFC would pursue their threat of legal action against the shop.
Zhu revealed he was the architect of the original Obama logo, but it was not his intention to violate any copyright laws.
The second-year Beijing City College student opened UFO with two of his fellow pupils in order to support their families.
KFC were said to be very unhappy with the Beijing restaurant.
A spokesperson for the company told the Washington Post: ‘We’re considering legal action as it is a knock-off and has nothing to do with us and it infringes on our brand trademark.
‘We find it distasteful.’
