Expired Meat Scandal Sends Profits Plunging at Czech KFC Owner

AmRest, the company behind KFC, Starbucks, Burger King and Pizza Hut restaurants in Czechia, posted an operating loss of €5.6 million (roughly 135 million crowns) for the first half of 2026. A year earlier, the company had reported a profit of €18.1 million. Revenue at the Czech division dropped by more than 18% — from €169.4 million to €138.6 million (about 3.35 billion crowns) — according to AmRest's consolidated half-year report.

Meat scandal takes a toll on business

AmRest directly links its weak Czech results to the lingering fallout from the KFC scandal. According to the company, the controversy is still keeping customers away and damaging the brand's image — sales have yet to return to pre-crisis levels despite a "growth plan" that includes new food quality and safety standards, digital monitoring tools, and additional staff training.

KFC operates 140 restaurants in Czechia, but AmRest does not break out separate figures for the chain — only combined results for the whole group, which also includes 61 Starbucks cafés, 33 Burger King outlets and 15 Pizza Hut restaurants.

The pace of decline is gradually slowing: in the fourth quarter of last year, AmRest's Czech revenue fell 21.5% year-on-year, dropping by roughly a fifth in the first quarter of this year, while the second-quarter decline eased to 16.4%.

How the scandal began

The story of expired meat at Czech KFC restaurants broke in early September 2025, when journalist Jan Tůma published employee testimonies alleging that labels were being swapped, expiration dates artificially extended, and products used past their use-by dates. In mid-September, the food inspection authority indeed found expired meat at one of the outlets in Liberec.

Business took an almost immediate hit: in the fourth quarter of 2025, AmRest's Czech revenue fell 21.5% to €69.7 million.

Management admits the impact, promises fixes

Back in May, Ivana Makalová-Dlouhá, head of KFC's Czech division, acknowledged the scandal's toll. "I fully understand that some of our customers have cut back on visits or stopped coming altogether. And our communication hasn't helped in this regard," she said, adding that the company should have started responding sooner and more decisively.

As part of the switch to new digital systems for monitoring raw materials and restaurant operations, all 140 Czech KFC restaurants were simultaneously closed for two hours in May of this year. According to Makalová-Dlouhá, employees have completed a combined 34,000 additional hours of training since the scandal broke, with the costs of addressing the fallout running into millions of crowns. By May, the chain had undergone around 950 inspections by state authorities and external auditors.

The weak performance of the Czech market also weighed on AmRest's overall group results: the company attributes the drop in second-quarter EBITDA primarily to sluggish performance in lower-revenue markets with fewer transactions — chiefly Czechia, Romania and Germany.

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Source: seznamzpravy.cz