Did You Know ‘Kentucky Roast Beef’ Was Once Part of the KFC Empire?

While doing my research for this story, it DID occur to me that one of my all-time favorite menu items at Kentucky Fried Chicken--now KFC--wasn't even chicken. It was pork. Blasphemy, you say? Well then, take it back.

KFC Ribs

There used to be a KFC along Frederica Street between Byers Avenue and Tamarack Road, but I can't remember where since everything on this side of Frederica is different from how it used to be 20 to 40 years go. But my family would visit a lot because we were all fans of KFC's ribs. Yes, ribs. Meaty, tangy (barbecue sauce on EVERYTHING for me), and they fell right off the bone. My sister and I still talk about those ribs. Phenomenal.

And honestly, I thought those ribs disappeared decades ago, never to return. Then I found this. It sounds like an ad from the U.K. where they apparently did NOT disappear.

I can tell you that the ribs I mean didn't look like these. There's not enough meat on THESE bones.

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Kentucky Roast Beef and Ham

Kentucky Fried Chicken was such an explosive, out-of-the-box hit in the 1960s that expansion was inevitable. And it came in the form of Kentucky Roast Beef and Ham.

Today, it seems unthinkable KFC would have EVER ventured so far away from chicken that an attempt at a new SUB-franchise would have been made. But it was. In this look back at some notable fast food failures, hit the 3:11 mark for an overview of the short life of Kentucky Roast Beef:

Kentucky Roast Beef and Ham restaurants opened in 1968--the first one in Las Vegas--but it was too expensive to maintain and shuttered by 1970.

It sounds to me like a good old-fashioned lesson in "dance with the one who brought ya." KFC has been dancing to the same tune for the last 55 years, and it works.