Customers angry over KFC bathroom Carnival lockout

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) outlets in Kingstown were thrown into the frying pan this week, when customers publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with services provided for the Carnival weekend.{{more}}

For two days over the long Carnival weekend, the major fast food outlet boarded up its bathrooms, barring all access to the public.

In a letter to SEARCHLIGHT, one dine-in customer expressed dissatisfaction with the fast food outlet services, describing them as “poor” and “unhygienic”.

“Can Mr Boyea please enlighten me as to how he expects to provide services to customers meeting food and hygiene standards without the provision of this facility?,” the letter said.

“Why must I, a paying customer, be penalized because Mr Boyea didn’t want non-consumers to use his facility?

“It is time that people stop treating Vincentians with disregard and stop treating us like we are uneducated”.

The letter also stated that a more considerate act would be to hire a teller for the bathrooms, so that non-consumers pay a charge to use facilities, and paying customers are not unfairly treated.

When contacted by SEARCHLIGHT, general manager Shanda Boyea apologized for the inconvenience, but noted that the franchise boarded up the bathrooms in the interest of the business and its customers.

“We apologize for the experience that they would have had, but the fact that we are able to provide our full service on Wednesday, we’re happy to do that again for them. We look out for all customers and we’re very sorry that she would have had that experience,” Boyea said.

Boyea explained that boarding up their bathroom facilities is a practice that the business has been engaging in over the years, to protect their property.

“What we try to do at Carnival is provide a takeout service mainly, because over the years,… the bathrooms have been destroyed to the point where we had to replace bathroom [facilities] every Carnival. Unfortunately, revellers come in and they destroy the facilities, break toilet stuff and so on.

“It is not … that we are running away from the expense of it, but it’s just that…come Wednesday morning, we still have a business to run and we’d like to be able to provide that service to our customers,” the manager said.

Although the bathrooms were closed at both outlets in Kingstown, Boyea stated that the Arnos Vale branch’s bathrooms remained open to customers.

Additionally, she said that alternate facilities were provided upstairs the KFC outlet on James Street, which is located adjacent to the Port Authority on Bay Street.

“…At Carnival time we provide a take-out service really to avoid the pressure that we have coming from the extra people,” she said.

The bathrooms at the fast food outlet were boarded on Monday morning before J’Ouvert and re-opened on Tuesday night, when Vincy Mas came to an official end. (BK)