An interesting report from the intersection of jihad and McWorld:
Ramadan sees finger-licking sales at outlets for fast foods
By Ika Ardina, Sumathi Bala and Shawn Donnan
Financial Times
Nov 13, 2003
In the week before the start of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan at the end of October, Jakarta's drivers got a change in scenery.
Down came the Kentucky Fried Chicken billboard featuring half a dozen curvy models which loomed over one of the Indonesian capital's main thoroughfares.
In its place the American fast food chain has put up another showing four men in conservative Islamic dress posing around one of the giant drums used to call Muslims to prayer. "Let's drum up the Ramadan spirit," they urge those stuck in the endless traffic jams below.
It might seem a peculiar message for a fast-food giant to give customers working their way through the hunger pangs that come with the day-long fast required of all able-bodied Muslims. But the advertisement points to a peculiar reality: in the world's largest Muslim nation there is no month more lucrative for KFC than Ramadan. And when, in many parts of the Islamic world, the US government is at its most unpopular, that fact serves as an example of the love-hate relationship many Muslims have adopted towards the US and its icons.
According to J.D. Juwono, head of the Gelael Group, owners of the KFC franchise in Indonesia, Ramadan sees average daily sales at the company's almost 200 outlets increase by as much as 20 per cent. Normally those outlets would use 20,000 chickens daily. During the fasting month that can reach 30,000 chickens cut into the KFC-mandated nine pieces.
"When you go to KFC . . . 15 minutes before buka puasa [the end of each day's fast] you can see how busy we are," says Mr Juwono.
The phenomenon is not unique to Indonesia. In nearby predominantly Muslim Malaysia, sales at KFC dip during the daytime fasting hours and surge in the evening. In Singapore, KFC stores catering to the island state's Malay Muslim minority offer free dates with their meals. This year KFC has dispatched Harley Davidson-riding Muslims to deliver meals to some of the island's poorer Islamic residents.
Consumers the world over are sophisticated enough to know the difference between Washington and the occasionally crass products with which American culture is identified.
But the KFC trend sits at odds with recent research on attitudes towards the US.
A June opinion poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, for example, found 15 per cent of Indonesians held a favourable opinion of the US versus 75 per cent three years ago.
Behind that, analysts say, is a more complex picture of a growing divergence in the attitudes Muslims in Indonesia and elsewhere have of the government in Washington and the US and its culture as a whole.
No one does Ramadan like the Colonel.
An effort to take its message of goodwill to the Muslim airwaves via State Department-sponsored television commercials last year, for example, failed when Muslim scholars criticised them for missing the point.
An offer of $157m (136m, £95m) in educational aid that President George W. Bush made during a visit to Indonesia earlier this month to help counter the fundamentalism being taught in some Islamic boarding schools has also been criticised by some moderate Muslim leaders afraid that Washington only wants to meddle.
In a place such as Indonesia, argues Greg Fealy, an expert on Indonesian Islam at the Australian National University, "the distinction has to be made between attitudes towards the US government and the United States more broadly".
Popular American brands such as KFC and McDonald's continue to be powerful symbols of western affluence in Indonesia and Malaysia, says Mr Fealy, while Washington's actions in Iraq incite anger and suspicion. "KFC is dragging along very little of that baggage," he says.
KFC has not replaced more time-tested ways of fast-breaking. Across Indonesia every year at Ramadan special markets offering imported dates, curried cow brains and chilli-covered shrimp still cater to those in search of more traditional fare.
Success also has its price. Yulia Astuti tried to break her fast at a KFC in Jakarta last week only to encounter a daunting crowd. "I bought a bottle of mineral water to break my fast and waited half an hour to buy the KFC chicken," says the 27-year-old office worker.
Additional reporting by Sumathi Bala in Singapore and Ika Ardina in Jakarta
Linear Mode
