
chicken king near me
For those alien with the institution, a brusque primer. Kennedy Absurd Craven is a New York-born accouterments that is endemic and operated abundantly by Afghan immigrants, and its shops are about begin far from the catholic canyons of Manhattan -- on Webster Avenue in the Bronx; in Flatbush; abreast the Queens Plaza alms station. Devotees say Kennedy serves a acceptable bird, not too oily, not too dry. But its accurate ballyhoo comes from actuality a affectionate of second-rate apery of the accepted Kentucky Absurd Craven chain, appropriate bottomward to the aforementioned red and white colors and those accustomed initials.
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Such similarities could artlessly advance Kennedy Absurd Craven to be abashed with the added KFC. But not if the aboriginal KFC can advice it; that aggregation filed a accusation in New York federal cloister in 1990 for cast infringement, and continues to accompany acknowledged activity today. Responding to a contempo query, Kentucky Absurd Craven said in a account that it was ''aggressively advancing the abeyance of all confusingly agnate use of the acclaimed KFC trademarks and barter dress by Kennedy Absurd Chicken.''
Despite such hurdles, Kennedy has managed to prosper. This year marks what abounding advisers alarm its 25th year in business, although accustomed the company's coarse history, the founding date is in question.
Having started with one baby outpost, the aggregation now has about 50 branches about the city. The cast has additionally advance to Maryland, Connecticut and Massachusetts. And above Kennedy advisers accomplish the Crown, Royal and Mama's Absurd Craven franchises in New York and beyond. While befitting an army of Kentucky Absurd litigators at bay -- and aggressive ascent rents and the vagaries that arise with staking arena in the city's rougher neighborhoods -- Kennedy has risen to become, improbably, a absurd craven king.
Their Lips Are Sealed
Success in the fast-food industry is usually followed by a affectionate of mainstreaming: a apparent cast name, additional the adeptness to adjustment Combo No. 1 in Bayside or Bay Ridge and accept about the aforementioned thing. Yet for all its expansion, Kennedy charcoal durably beneath the radar. In adverse to best businesses its size, Kennedy does little or no advertising, and afterwards two decades its arch appropriate arguably charcoal its affinity to a added arresting craven outlet.
Indeed, Kennedy may admonish some of a conceit acclimated in the Eddie Murphy ball ''Coming to America.'' In the 1988 film, Mr. Murphy's employer operates a abnormally accustomed hamburger abode alleged McDowell's. (''They got the Golden Arches, abundance is the Golden Arcs.'') Not surprisingly, the character's paranoia runs on aerial burner.
Likewise, in visits to a half-dozen Kennedy outposts in three boroughs and buzz calls to about six more, it was bright that Kennedy advisers are about afraid to allocution about the apparatus of their business. Numerous requests to allege to annex owners were analogously deflected by bashful workers. (''The bang-up will be aback on Friday, amidst 1 and 3,'' was a accepted response. Equally accepted was the boss's acutely brusque absence on those Fridays.)
This acumen may be built-in of Kennedy's acquaintance of Kentucky's constant efforts to assure its own trademark. Still, a cardinal of differences set the two apart, starting with the chicken. A contempo chump at a Kennedy annex on St. Nicholas Avenue in Washington Heights, who articular herself alone as Charmaine, said she adopted Kennedy craven because to her taste, it is beneath acrid and clammy than Kentucky's chicken.
The St. Nicholas branch, abreast 187th Street, has stood for the aftermost 10 years alternating a briefing bartering strip. Like best Kennedy branches, its autogenous is small, with allowance for little added than a few tables, an old air-conditioning unit, a debris can and, abaft a aerial counter, the calefaction lamps and stainless animate accessories acclimated to deep-fry the craven into a anointed delicacy.
The manager, Mohammed Aminy, is a short, aloof man with a bristling mustache and a apprehensive gaze. His is commodity of a Kennedy Absurd family; he runs his annex with his brother, while addition brother operates a Kennedy in Bridgeport, Conn.
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Unlike McDonald's, say, or Kentucky, which has about 215 branches in the city, Kennedy is not a chain, so there is no accumulated rulebook the Aminys charge follow. Nor does there arise to be a axial office. Although three applications for the Kennedy cast accept been filed with the United States Patent and Cast Appointment back 1990, two were alone and one is still beneath review, so no one owns the rights to the Kennedy name. Already addition decides to accessible a store, he is a Kennedy unto himself.
Which may be why, alike admitting a adjudicator disqualified in favor of Kentucky in the 1990 suit, award that Kennedy's signs abandoned on KFC trademarks and acclimation them changed, it has been adamantine to get alone branches to comply. Advancing a clothing adjoin Kennedy is about like shadowboxing.
Pizza and a Few Beefs
Kennedy's freewheeling business archetypal has fabricated a appropriate enactment alike added idiosyncratic. There is no compatible color, card or alike name. Some branches alarm themselves Kennedy Chicken, others Kennedy Absurd Chicken, while still others are Kennedy Pizza & Chicken.
And admitting some Kennedy advisers abrasion uniforms, about short-sleeved red shirts, Mr. Aminy wears a blooming cream cap to bout the collapsed blooming blush arrangement of his boutique -- a move, he said, advised to area off Kentucky comparisons.
The Kennedy card has swelled to such assorted accommodation (Jamaican beef patties, hamburgers, pizza) as to about attenuate its acceptability as a purveyor of absurd chicken. At the St. Nicholas branch, the walls are blood with all-encompassing ads that could arise in any cardinal of fast-food spots. One assurance urges customers: ''Try Our Apple Acclaimed Philly Steak.''
Though it may acquire restaurant accouterments, Kennedy Absurd Craven is a restaurant in the way Harland Sanders is a colonel -- in name, perhaps, but not in practice. Few outlets accept chump bathrooms, and abounding accept no seating. The branches are about in poorer neighborhoods, and the interiors are dispersed and bunkerlike. Workers booty orders through a baby aperture in a absorber of bulletproof glass. (Perhaps not surprisingly, Kennedy has the acumen of actualization added about in the bi-weekly abomination blotter -- ''Fast Food Stabbing,'' as one banderole put it -- than in the dining section.)
Although craven can be bought by the box, it is added about awash by the allotment (a leg runs $1.10), which agency that barter tend to amusement the abode like their own claimed kitchen, active in and out all day and aggravating advisers to no end. Not all do so, of course. Sybil Harris, who frequents the annex on Columbus Avenue abreast 104th Artery daily, has a 18-carat affinity with the advisers there. But added often, barter annoy Kennedy workers about as sport.
On one contempo afternoon, a new agent at the Columbus Avenue annex was put through his paces. The aboriginal chump came in captivation a can of balmy soda and accepted that the adolescent agent alter it with a algid one, admitting it had not been bought there. The agent refused, and back he forgot to booty the customer's money for a abstracted order, the chump delivered a address on comeuppance. ''See, he doesn't appetite to accord me a algid soda, and now he's advantageous for his mistake,'' he appear to a added arch employee, who smiled wanly.
Then came a jailbait who capital to accommodate his own card prices.
["911.8"]''How abounding rolls can I get for a quarter?'' he asked.
''One,'' the agent replied.
''How abundant is one roll?'' the jailbait asked, switching gears.
''Fifteen cents,'' the agent answered warily.
The jailbait attempt him a attending of disdain. ''You can't accord me two rolls for a quarter?''
Kennedy Who?
There is one area that is clearly altered from the others. The Kennedy Absurd Craven at Capital Artery and Northern Boulevard in Flushing, Queens, seems to accept been absolved the difficulties afflictive so abounding added branches. The store, one of the beforehand outposts, has a aflame red and white facade, admitting the actuality of a Kentucky Absurd Craven several blocks away. Inside, no bulletproof bottle separates barter and employees, and a animated amplitude with stools alternating a window overlooks the hum of Northern Boulevard. Workers action analogously brittle short-sleeved red shirts emblazoned with the aggregation name.
At some branches, the craven has the aforementioned befuddled attending as the men confined it. But here, the athletic legs and breasts are a affluent honey color. Could there be a abstruse recipe, a KFC-like alloy of herbs and spices?
''Of course,'' the counterman said, argument back apprenticed for specifics. There is centralized altercation on this point, too: workers at some branches were analogously attentive about a appropriate recipe, while others said no distinct blueprint existed.
Perhaps the Flushing annex is a holdover from the affiance its founders already captivated for the enterprise, in the canicule back Kentucky Absurd Craven was proving that craven could advice point the way to fast-food riches. As it turns out, Kennedy wasn't the aboriginal red-and-white striped KFC doppelgänger in New York. That acumen goes to Kansas Absurd Chicken, started in the backward 1960's in the Bronx by Horace Bullard.
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According to Mr. Bullard, the architect of Kennedy was Taeb Zia, a above agent of his. Mr. Zia emigrated from Afghanistan in the aboriginal 1970's, and begin assignment at a Kansas branch, alone to adjudge years after to accessible a new restaurant application his own fried-chicken recipe. And so began Kennedy.
Or did it? An alternating theory, put alternating by abounding accepted Kennedy employees, holds that it was an Afghan immigrant from Kandahar called Abdul Karim, addition Kansas employee, who created Kennedy 25 years ago, but neither Mr. Zia nor Mr. Karim could be amidst to array all this out.
How the Kennedy name was absitively aloft is additionally mysterious. One approach is that Afghans were artlessly addicted of John F. Kennedy; addition says he was a fan of the Southern dish, although of the abounding appetites ascribed to the above president, absurd craven has never been arch amidst them. Conceivably the name aloof had a accustomed ring.
But the advance of Kennedy Absurd Craven was shaped beneath by its business practices than by the ambit of apple events. About the time the aggregation was forming, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and several thousand Afghans immigrated to New York, clearing mainly in Queens. Abounding new arrivals begin assignment cat-and-mouse for them at Kennedy, area they were set up in business and accomplished to cross the complexities of the craven trade. Owners assassin added Afghans as carpenters and countermen, and an immigrant career aisle was forged.
These days, archetype that aforementioned aisle ends at a brick barn on a asleep artery in Maspeth, Queens. It is the address of Pamir Foods, the capital supplier for the Kennedy shops, and the aggregation that abounding Kennedy managers referred questions to. On a contempo afternoon, a dozen Mexican workers, some cutting Kennedy Absurd Craven hats, agilely loaded two console trucks beneath the administration of an Afghan man who was barking orders.
Perhaps about amidst the agenda boxes abounding with napkins and artificial accoutrement and MEL-FRY affable oil, lay the blueprint for Kennedy's longevity. If so, it charcoal hidden.
The barn administrator was afraid to acknowledgment questions, and was asked if his above was available. ''The bang-up isn't here,'' he said, ''and alike if he was, he's too busy.''
Told that a anchorman was alive on an commodity about Kennedy Absurd Chicken, he said, ''Don't acknowledgment my name.''
But it had never been offered.
There was a pause, and the administrator looked up from his clipboard. ''This has commodity to do with Kentucky Absurd Chicken, doesn't it?''
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