Just a few short years ago, fast food chains dominated their market. Regardless of health code violations or nutritional facts, these burger peddlers, chicken fryers, and pizza purveyors reigned supreme when it came to their growth numbers. But recently, customers have gotten wise to the health infractions committed by these chains and have slowly stopped purchasing their greasy meal alternatives. Fortunately, they have come up with a way to bring people back to their companies: useless tech innovations!
Yes, particularly in the last few months, fast food chains like KFC and Pizza Hut have released a number of unique packaging promotions that have shown the world how impressively oblivious they are to their customers needs. They have modernized, digitalized, and future-ified everything from pizza boxes to meal deals and it’s proving that their tech departments are all about “coulda” rather than “shoulda.”
For those of you that don’t know about these innovation abominations, take a look at two examples of the worst offenders below.
KFC’s Phone Charger in a Meal Box
You read that correctly. In June, KFC decided that their customers weren’t ignoring each other enough by looking at their smartphones so they decided to make meal boxes that come equipped with a portable battery and cables for Android and iPhones a like.
Deemed the “Watt a Box” for obvious pun-focused reasons, the promotion was only available for a few select winners, and was not available in every store. However, the fact that KFC thought this was necessary is a true testament to the out-of-touch fast food chain grasping at straws.
Pizza Hut’s Cardboard Box DJ Tables
If you’ve been on Facebook today, you’ve no doubt seen this video. It’s a demonstration of Pizza Hut’s newest useless innovation, the playable DJ table on the inside of a pizza box. According to the video, you can connect the pizza box to your smartphone or laptop through Bluetooth and actually mix songs through DJ apps like Serato DJ. They even said they would give away a few models at five of their 350 UK stores.
While this tech innovation might seem kind of cool, picture for a minute how greasy your fingers are going to get when you use this nifty bit of marketing gold for the first time. Innovations are supposed to make life easier, not messier.
Photo: Flickr / A.Currell
