BITE Insight

Forget the mugs, the plates, the towels and even the face-emblazoned swimming costumes. The only Royal Wedding memorabilia you’ll want to get your hands on this May is a fine English bone china, KFC bucket.

KFC worked with iris to create Kentucky Fried China, an homage to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. While many were chinking glasses of prosecco, a few lucky members of the Colonel’s Club, KFC’s loyalty scheme, were eating fried chicken from a bone china bucket.

Made in Stoke-on-Trent, the home of English pottery, the limited run of 25 buckets were designed with a 22-carat burnished gold rim and a KFC crest design on the side inspired by traditional commemorative memorabilia. A competition ran from 15th-20th May for KFC loyalists to try their luck at winning a bucket.

While many brands hitched their campaigns onto royal wedding fever, KFC managed to do so in a brilliantly subversive way. The exclusivity of the buckets only added to the excitement they generated and to the value of a Colonel’s Club membership. This campaign goes beyond a points collecting exercise and offers members a tangible, branded memento.

Apparently Harry proposed to Meghan in front of a roasted chicken, generating a moment too delicious for KFC to pass up on. Kentucky Fried China “is a perfect marriage of the finest English china and the fine flavour of the American South.”