CASE STUDY
How KFC Finland is building a faster, more data-driven way to evaluate restaurant sites
Since the world famous fast-food chain, KFC was introduced in Finland, it's only been expanding. The company is working toward operating roughly 70 restaurants and a position among Finland's three largest fast-food chains.
At that pace, site selection is not an occasional project. It becomes a routine, and a non-negotiable part of the workflow. Every location still has to achieve a strong enough catchment to support a restaurant.
The KFC team uses CHAOS to evaluate, simulate, and stress test how those locations perform in cities and areas they have not operated in before.
Customer:
KFC Finland
Use Case:
Restaurant Site Selection & Catchment Analysis
Industry:
Quick-Service Restaurants / Retail Site Selection
CHAOS is being built around how KFC's team already works, not the other way around. The goal is a process that can keep pace with eight to ten openings a year without cutting corners on any single one.
Reachable points of interest tuned to what actually drives footfall to a KFC restaurant
Competitor positioning and geospatial imagery included in every site comparison
Examine footfall patterns, population structure, and household data around sites
KFC's own shortlisted locations imported directly onto the map
CHAOS' footfall data source supports KFC's catchment analysis
Location presentations moving from manual build is automated with CHAOS
VERDICT
A site-selection process built for KFC's growth rate
THE CHALLENGE
Opening restaurant locations at the right places
Every new KFC location starts with the same question restaurant chains have always had to answer: is this catchment area strong enough to support a restaurant?
Each site still needs its own case built from demographics, competitor positioning, and the points of interest that actually draw the kind of footfall a restaurant depends on. Today, that case comes together as a process that takes roughly two hours per location, before two sites can even be compared against each other, let alone the dozen or more that need evaluating each year.
The gap isn't ambition. KFC and its parent company Apollo Group have been explicit that finding the right locations is non-negotiable to the growth plan. The gap is process: a method built for a handful of decisions a year doesn't hold up once that number multiplies.
"Every site decision comes down to the same questions of catchment, competitors, and footfall. With CHAOS we can evaluate those faster and with data we trust, instead of rebuilding the case from scratch each time"
Tero Nyström
Chief Development Officer
Rather than introducing a new way of evaluating sites, CHAOS is being shaped to fit into the one KFC's team already uses.
That starts with the points of interest CHAOS surfaces around a given location, adjusted to reflect what actually predicts footfall for a KFC restaurant specifically, rather than a generic set of nearby amenities. Competitor locations and geospatial imagery are being verified for availability across the areas KFC evaluates, so both sit inside the same analysis instead of requiring a separate step.
With CHAOS, KFC's team is able to upload their location shortlist as an Excel file directly onto the map, letting their shortlisted sites sit alongside everything else the platform already knows about an area.
The footfall data replacement is the largest piece of underlying work, expected within two to three months, and will sit under every catchment estimate CHAOS produces for KFC going forward.
Alongside it, the CHAOS team is developing an AI-generated version of the location presentation KFC's team already builds, matching the same data points and structure already in use, so the output looks like what the business expects, even as less manual work sits behind it.
THE SOLUTION
Matching the platform to KFC's existing workflow
THE RESULT
Supporting a process built for the years ahead
The features above are at different stages with some already built and being tested, others still in development. Taken together, they're intended to get KFC's team to a point where they can:
Generate a location presentation in a fraction of the time a manual version takes
Filter analysis by the points of interest that actually matter for a KFC site
See competitor positioning and geospatial imagery as a default part of every comparison
Bring their own shortlisted locations into the platform directly
Base catchment decisions on footfall data built for this use case, not adapted from another one
None of this removes judgement from the process. Deciding to open a restaurant in a given location still comes down to people who know the market. What CHAOS is being built to change is how long it takes to get the data in front of them, and how consistent that data is from one site to the next which matters more with every year KFC adds to its restaurant count.
"In every site decision we need to answer the same question: catchment, competitors, footfall. With CHAOS we can answer those faster and with data we trust, instead of rebuilding the case from scratch each time"
