KFC has debuted an Open House restaurant in McKinney, Texas, as a live test of modern design, digital tools, and expanded hours while keeping original-recipe buckets intact, a direct bid to reclaim everyday eating occasions.
The 75-year-old fried-chicken chain is using one suburban location in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to overhaul how it looks, serves, and schedules without abandoning what made it famous. KFC US President Catherine Tan-Gillespie described the project to Fox News Digital as the brand’s comeback made concrete in a single store.
Art Deco and mid-century modern lines define the space. Large glass windows open the interior. Digital ordering and drive-thru technology handle speed. Lobby hosts and table service keep a human touch. Booths and outdoor dining give guests room to stay.
The operating window runs from 6 a.m. to midnight. That schedule deliberately tests breakfast and late-night dayparts the chain has not always owned. Tan-Gillespie said the company will watch whether those shoulder hours work commercially for guests and for team members. If they fail, KFC will cut them back. If they succeed, the model can scale nationally.
Tan-Gillespie framed the service philosophy in plain terms. “For me, the philosophy is that we should be digital where it’s helpful, but human where it matters,” she said. The mix aims to move KFC out of pure nostalgia and into the moments when people actually decide what to eat today.
“There is a massive love for this American icon,” she told reporters. “We tend to be thought about in people’s memories. We’re not actually being considered in eating moments of today.” The Open House concept is the company’s answer to that gap.
Menu expansion stays tethered to the core product. Buckets of original-recipe fried chicken “should not change,” Tan-Gillespie insisted. What can change is how customers eat that chicken now: tenders, wings, sandwiches, wraps, nuggets, plus new sauces, drinks, snacks, sweets, and sides. The goal is broader appeal without rewriting the secret recipe.
That same customer pressure has already forced menu course-corrections elsewhere, including the decision to bring back Popcorn Chicken after years of demand. Open House simply extends the logic to the full restaurant experience.
Dallas-Fort Worth is a fast-growing, competitive restaurant market. Tan-Gillespie said the chain picked McKinney with scalability in mind. The suburb mixes existing KFC loyalists with newer diners the brand still needs to win. Success here is meant to show the design and dayparts can work in other strong markets.
The timing is not accidental. KFC has spent recent years contracting its U.S. footprint while rivals gained ground. Earlier reporting documented how the chain shut down more than 300 U.S. locations as competitors seized share. A single test restaurant will not reverse that alone, but it signals management is done relying on memory alone.
Further tracking showed the chain permanently closed 312 U.S. locations in one year, with California leading the losses. Against that backdrop, Open House is an explicit attempt to stop the slide by modernizing the guest experience rather than simply defending the old one.
Company leaders asked themselves a simple question during development: if Colonel Harland Sanders were building a restaurant from scratch today, what would it look like? Tan-Gillespie’s answer is the McKinney store. She believes the founder would recognize the balance.
“I think he would feel really proud, actually,” she said. “I think he would say, ‘This feels like me. This feels like what I was trying to do.’ But for today.” The line captures the entire project: keep the product sacred, update everything around it so the brand stays in the daily consideration set.
“This is the Kentucky Fried comeback made real in one restaurant,” Tan-Gillespie declared. Whether the comeback holds will depend on sales data from breakfast, late night, and the expanded menu, not on slogans. The chain has already shown it will kill underperforming dayparts rather than carry them out of sentiment.
Market reality remains unforgiving. Separate coverage has tracked how KFC shuttered hundreds of U.S. locations in the past year while the numbers kept shifting. Open House is the clearest public bet yet that design, technology, and longer hours can reverse that trend without touching the original recipe.
The same competitive pressure also explains why the company is treating McKinney as more than a one-off showpiece. Parallel reporting framed the store as part of a broader push to retake the U.S. fried chicken lead. One restaurant cannot do that job alone, but it can prove which changes are worth rolling out.
Customers still decide with their wallets. KFC is finally treating that fact as the starting point instead of an afterthought. A brand that stays locked in memory while rivals own the dinner rush eventually owns neither.