KFC China's Re:Store virtual restaurant draws 19M visitors, wins Cannes Bronze

KFC China had grown to more than 9,000 restaurants that functioned as places for young people to socialize, meet and play. But a generation had shifted its social life into games: the case cites 50% of Gen Z saying they spent more time playing with friends online than in the real world, treating games as the new social venue and virtual worlds as the new mall.

So KFC, with Dentsu Creative China, Tencent Advertising and TiMi Studio Group, built KFC Re:Store — a working virtual KFC inside Tencent's Super QQ Show, created with Unreal Engine 4 and styled as a mix of traditional Chinese architecture and modern tech. Players can hold food parties with friends through voice, emotes and gestures, play games, take selfies or film dance videos to share, and spend time as if the restaurant were real.

The store also gave users reasons to return and own something: customizable KFC avatar outfits, the pet Fengwan, chicken-leg coins for buying furniture, and the ability to open a personal KFC restaurant. Virtual meals, coupons and gifts could be exchanged at physical stores, and one-click ordering summoned real KFC delivery — the first brand commerce of its kind on the QQ platform.

In five weeks the numbers were unusually large for a virtual store: 19 million visitors, 4.3 billion+ interactions, 850 million chats with Colonel Sanders, 6.2 million metaverse selfies, 2.7 billion chicken-leg coins issued, 6.69 million users in KFC outfits, 8.28 million virtual meal purchases and 180 million virtual fries and colas consumed. Avatar-apparel consumption on the platform jumped 41% the day the KFC looks launched, and the work won a 2023 Cannes Creative Commerce Bronze in the new Metaverse, New Realities & Emerging Tech category.