Fast food giant KFC has incensed its Thai customers with a now-deleted Lunar New Year promo which many found to be in poor taste.
Ahead of the festive season, the eatery shared an Instagram promotion for its new fried chicken incense sticks. It is unclear if the product was real, but each stick reportedly contained 11 herbs and spices to mimic the smell of its fried food, according to news portal Thaiger.
Incense has multiple ceremonial uses in Chinese culture, including to honour the dead.
“[O]ur ancestor can enjoy the scent of KFC…” wrote one Instagram commenter. “That’s so inappropriate,” wrote another user.
“So many things wrong with this. You’d that they would know Chinese culture better,” one Twitter reaction read.
Ho Ching, the wife of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien, was among those who shared the promotional material, accompanied by the exclamation: “Wah…”
The blunder comes a year after UK newspaper the Observer faced flak for using Chinese funeral joss paper in a “cursed” Lunar New Year food feature.
