Clear off the coffee table: For this year's Super Bowl, some fast-food restaurants are promoting mega-meals in giant packages designed to make the food the life of the party.
Take KFC's new "Gameday Bucket." While its traditional take-home buckets typically sat on a kitchen table for a shared family meal, the new offering is stuffed with 26 pieces of chicken, enough to feed a large gathering of football fans. And it's topped with a detachable, bowl-shaped lid filled with wings and chicken "bites" that can be passed around the TV room.
The idea was to build on KFC's "bucket equity," encouraging consumers to serve chicken at big occasions, away from the table, says Jason Marker, chief marketing officer for KFC.
Other companies are following a similar game plan this year, offering larger quantities of food and complete meals in a single easy-to-carry box. The restaurants hope to capitalize on what they see as consumers' growing taste for eating at home in large groups, and to attract younger diners who tend to view eating as a social experience more strongly than their elders do.
Taco Bell, for instance, is selling a "Variety Taco 12 Pack" that comes in a box with a handle. Pizza Hut, meanwhile, is promoting its "Big Dinner Box," two pizzas plus two sides, like breadsticks or wings, all arranged in a single tray-like carton. Like KFC, the two chains are owned by Yum Brands
"In the past we've tended to focus on the form of the pizza," like creating dippable cheesy bread bites out of pizza crust, says Kurt Kane, chief marketing officer for Pizza Hut. "This "is actually a packaging innovation."
McDonald's Corp.'s take is a 40-piece Chicken McNuggets meal, up from the 20-piece version it offered last year. Research last year showed consumers wanted "more chicken product for us to share with bigger parties," says Elizabeth Campbell, director of marketing for McDonald's USA. The 40-piece meal is made up of two boxes of 20 each, up from the standard 10-piece box.
KFC's Gameday Bucket comes decorated with referee icons explaining the "official rules of "Couchgating." (For example, "Offsides—No screen blocking!")
"We kind of liken it to a cereal-box experience," says Carrie Crawford Frazier, vice president and account director at Creative Alliance Inc., a Louisville, Ky., advertising and branding firm that worked on the bucket.
Dips, pizza and chicken wings are still the most common dishes eaten during the Super Bowl, according to the National Restaurant Association, but restaurants that serve other foods hope to make inroads.
Chipotle Mexican Grill is again promoting its Burritos by the Box, for orders of six to 100 burritos. Customers ordered 8,500 such boxes last year, says Chris Arnold, director of communication for the company.
Taco Bell's taco pack "has a toolbox look to it," to appeal to men looking for food to bring to parties, says Chris Brandt, vice president of marketing. "We are trying to start a bit of a new tradition, bringing tacos to a party," he says. The offering is available at Taco Bell's drive-through windows.
For restaurants, talking about indulgent eating can be tricky. After health advocates objected, Taco Bell earlier this week pulled an ad for its 12-pack that poked fun at people who bring vegetables to game-day parties.
It's like "punting on fourth-and-one," says a voice-over in the ad, referring to football teams that choose to kick the ball away rather than trying for a close first down. "It's a cop-out. And secretly, people kind of hate you for it."