Will July 5 be another banner day for the fried-food slingers at KFC? The chain is launching a new sandwich that's sort of a spinoff of its napkin-requiring, fat-upon-fat, America-encapsulating Double Down. It will be called the Doublicious — you know, like Bubblicious, but with chicken and less fruity! Here is what this new mutation, which arrives in KFC outlets just one day after our country celebrates its awesomeness, will consist of:
The great self-loathing-filled reinvention of the Domino's Pizza recipe was big business for the Michigan-based purveyor of cheese and dough, with sales up 18.4% (to $381.1 million) and same-store sales up 14.3% in the first quarter of 2010. Domino's head pizza-tosser Thomas Doyle said that "all of it" was pretty much the result of the revamp and its attendant advertising blitz. Three months from now, expect to see similar smiley-faced proclamations from the Yum! Brands camp.
The grease purveyors at KFC have sold nearly 10 million bread-free Double Downs since the conglomeration of bacon, chicken, and special sauces made its debut a mere five weeks ago. The "promotional sandwich" was supposed to be removed from the chain's menus on May 23, but executives — clearly realizing that the only innovation that can get as much ink as the Double Down is a potentially horrifying one involving a blended drink that's named after a pun on the old percussion term "chicken shake" — have decided to keep them around at least through the end of the summer.
The always-number-crunching Nate Silver has compiled a chart of fast-food items' relative unhealthiness to KFC's Double Down. The winner as far as pure gluttony goes: Wendy's Triple Baconator (pictured), a three-patty lots-of-bacon-and-cheeseburger that has 1,350 calories, 90 grams of fat, and 2.78 grams of sodium — the equivalent of two and a half Double Downs, if you want to get mathy about it. If only it came on a lattice of bacon instead of a bun. It would be so much more bloggable that way! Someone get on that, OK?
At a "mere" 540 calories, KFC's chickeny Double Down is actually a caloric bargain when you compare it to the Frankenfoodstuffs proffered by the spike-haired Sammy Hagar clone Guy Fieri on Diners, Drive-Ins, And Dives, argues Greg Beato: "The fry cooks and burger-flippers would take one look at the puny Double Down and start planning a remodel. Add a square foot or two of pastrami, throw in a pound of turkey for texture, season with a scoopful of onion rings, pull it all together with salsa, barbecue sauce, and a lot more bacon and cheese, and for God's sake, give the customer a bun – a giant ciabatta round [...]
