News Nuggets from Jollibee, KFC and Lee’s

Jollibee (U.S. HQ: West Covina, Calif.) is adding to its New York footprint with a new restaurant opening on March 31. Located at 14 E. 42nd Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Midtown, it’s the Philippine-based brand’s third locale in Manhattan.

To herald the arrival of chicken kebabs at its Spanish restaurants, KFC (Louisville, Ky.) temporarily turned the totems at its highest-grossing locales in that country into what look like giant kebabs. Each installation features totems clad in a 40-foot-tall, 1-ton turning rotisserie, built from iron and coated in polyurethane foam to achieve a hyper-realistic finish that replicates KFC’s breaded chicken. The campaign, which ran March 24-30, also included TV ads.

Harris Mullis, owner-operator of the Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken (Shalimar, Fla.) franchise in Rock Hill, S.C., plans to open six added restaurants in that state. Specifics on the locations and timing of the added locales for the purveyor of honey-dipped, hand-breaded fried chicken have not yet been disclosed; overall the brand has 130-plus restaurants.