9 Discontinued KFC Items We Desperately Miss

Value menus, as exemplified by McDonald's Dollar Menu and Taco Bell's Dollar Cravings Menu, brought a lot of customers into fast food chains in the 2000s. Whether America is in the midst of a recession or not, value menus offer a way to piece together a meal for a startlingly small amount of money. KFC got in on the action in March 2005, according to QSRWeb, with the introduction of the KFC Snacker. A small sandwich, consisting of an Extra Crispy strip on a sesame seed bun topped with lettuce and mayonnaise and costing just 99 cents, became KFC's most successful new sandwich launch in company history; some stores sold as many as 1,000 a week.

Clearly, the KFC Snacker was immensely and demonstrably popular, but may have been too successful. Profit margins on value menu items can be razor-thin, and in 2012, the KFC Snacker was on the way out, replaced with a similar sandwich that was smaller and thus cheaper to prepare. According to Foodbeast, KFC went with the Chicken Little, a discontinued '80s menu introduction. The revamped Little consisted of a palm-sized dinner roll holding a chicken strip, some mayo, and pickle slices. It's almost the KFC Snacker — but not quite.

In the early 2020s, several companies have emerged offering brand-new, proprietary processes for creating plant-based meat substitutes that offer taste and texture similar to the real thing, far surpassing the beef-imitative abilities of old-fashioned soy or veggie burgers. Beyond Meat is an industry leader, selling faux beef patties, faux sausage crumbles, and, in a partnership with KFC, imitation fried chicken made entirely from plants and other non-animal sources.

According to CNBC, KFC had a successful test run of Beyond Fried Chicken in 2019, prompting a wider rollout in the South in 2020. The first plant-based fast food chicken at a major restaurant chain, Beyond Fried Chicken reportedly nailed not only the taste of KFC's familiar and beloved chicken (in the form of boneless nuggets and strips) but the texture, as well, imitating the naturally firm feel of fowl. When Beyond Fried Chicken was first offered in Atlanta, the restaurant sold out its supply in just five hours. Despite the popularity and the forward movement of the plant-based meat industry, KFC never did launch Beyond Fried Chicken nationwide, but the supplier may start selling its fried chicken directly to customers sometime in the near future, according to The Beet.

By the mid-1960s, Kentucky Fried Chicken was one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains, if not businesses, in America. The idea of an old-fashioned Sunday dinner any night of the week for not a lot of money was an irresistibly nostalgic proposition for millions, charmed as they were by company founder and pitchman Harland Sanders, a.k.a. the Colonel. In 1964, according to Retroist, Sanders sold the company to an investor group led by John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack C. Massey, who took the company public and rapidly expanded the chain from 600 to 1,700 locations in half a decade. Facing competition from upstarts like Chick-Fil-A and Church's, KFC decided to diversify, and in 1968 it began offering roast beef sandwiches, both at pre-existing stores and at standalone Kentucky Roast Beef outposts.

KFC, however, couldn't get enough chicken die-hards to switch to its carefully prepared, slow-cooked, thinly-sliced sandwiches made from quality meat, price was an issue. At most Kentucky Fried Chickens in 1968, a Jr. Chicken Dinner, consisting of two pieces of chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a biscuit, cost 85 cents. An a la carte roast beef sandwich would set a customer back 79 cents — not a great value, relatively speaking. A few franchised outlets sold the sandwiches into the '70s, but KFC's tasty roast beef has been gone for four decades now.

KFC has always been almost as much about the sides as it is about the chicken. From the beginning, customers could choose what starch and vegetables they wanted to make their meal, with mashed potatoes and gravy and coleslaw the most popular and enduring choices.

According to BroBible, KFC added another option in the early 1990s: potato wedges. Like the universal fast food favorite the French fry, KFC's wedges were comprised of cut and fried potatoes. Unlike the usual fry, those wedges were thick cut, retained the potato's skin, and were seasoned with a rich and flavorful blend of spices that made the crispy-on-the-outside, creamy-on-the-inside texture all the more undeniable. They were very similar to the wedges, often called "jo-jo's," sold at gas stations and convenience stores, but KFC's were simply a cut above, and they made a great side for KFC's many prearranged on-the-go combo meals.

KFC customers likely took the wedges for granted, thinking such a standard item would always be available. But in 2020, according to Business Insider, KFC abandoned wedges in favor of Secret Recipe Fries. Cut in the shoestring style used by competitors like McDonald's, Secret Recipe Fries were flavored with a spice blend purported to be the famous KFC "11 herbs and spices" used on the chicken (per Thrillist). Are they objectively tasty? Sure, but that's not going to convince customers on Team Wedges. "They need to take that off the menu," one fan tweeted. "Wedges was legendary for KFC."

If chicken nuggets are perceived as children's food, then chicken strips and chicken tenders are basically the same food, just rebranded and marketed toward adults. In 2013, KFC stepped up in the world of chicken meat that has been separated from its naturally occurring bones and then cut into easily manageable portions, breaded and fried, with its Original Recipe Boneless chicken. Sold in a bucket like unadulterated fried chicken, it was made with the signature KFC blend of "11 herbs and spices." Thus, it looked almost like and tasted exactly like KFC's Original Recipe chicken — just without those pesky choking hazards inside. KFC launched the product with a bizarre ad campaign featuring people who could not tell the difference between bone-in chicken and boneless chicken strips, who then panicked convinced that they'd actually eaten an entire piece of old-fashioned poultry, bones and all. "I ate the bones!" they'd horrifically shout.

Still, that KFC flavor and texture but in a more convenient delivery method should have been a slam dunk, a product that would last forever. But after about a year on the menu, KFC pulled Original Recipe Boneless, according to Delish, replacing them with a new strip more akin to the chain's crunchy (but forever less popular) Extra Crispy style.