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What They're Eating in Afghanistan Residents of the Afghan capital can't get enough KFC--Kabul Fried Chicken, that is. The city hosts four competing knockoffs of the global fast-food chain, complete with their own secret recipes, as well as logos copied from the Internet. "I consider myself the Afghan Colonel Sanders," says one entrepreneur, Mirwais Abuldrahizmi. No word yet on whether Yum! Brands, KFC's corporate parent, based in Louisville, Ky., plans to file a lawsuit to the contrary...
...sets in Kabul and the wail of the muezzin issuing from loudspeakers mounted on minarets calls the faithful to evening prayer, the fryer at KFC is being fired up for the evening rush. But Kabul Fried Chicken has little in common with the U.S. chain whose initials it copied: The chairs are a little too high for the tables, and the delights depicted in photographs mounted on the walls - big milkshakes, braised ribs, lattes - are conspicuously absent from the menu. The fare on offer is more egalitarian. Kebabs, pizza and, of course, fried chicken...
...Jamshed spits a bit when he talks - hopefully he cooks in silence. He claims that after being told by the (real) KFC regional HQ in Lahore, Pakistan, that opening a franchise in Kabul would cost him a few hundred thousand dollars, he opted to go the pirate route. He claims to have bought the U.S.-based KFC's secret fried chicken recipe on the black market for $1,200, although obviously that claim can't be verified. "You can get anything at the bazaar in Pakistan," he says. And he filched real KFC iconography off the Internet for his restaurant...
...Over at Mirwais' store, even the staff seem to believe they're actually affiliated with the real KFC, and when Mirwais is absent, one employee explains in detail an arrangement with KFC corporate that includes a five-year contract period, stipulations about naming rights, and training trips to Dubai - all of which Mirwais summarily dismisses. Nor have the authorities raised intellectual property concerns with the various local KFC imitators; officials from various arms of government are more likely to come looking for bribes...
...Jamshed and Mirwais have something of a rivalry between their respective Kabul Fried Chicken outlets. They refer to each other euphemistically as "friends more than partners," though in reality they're neither. Each claims to be Kabul's original KFC imitator, and accuses the other of stealing the recipe from him. Imitation, of course, is endemic to Afghanistan's business environment. "We're an underdeveloped country," Mirwais says. "So we can't come up with our own ideas...