KFC is the coolest when it comes to their training program. New employees are given an Oculus Rift headset and asked to complete an eerie escape room, which is narrated by a sinister-sounding Colonel Sanders. The mission is to make the Original Recipe fried chicken from beginning (cutting open a bag of frozen chicken) to the end (picking up a pressure-fried drumstick), all in a futuristic kitchen that feels like the entrance room of Disneyland's Haunted House. "Only one step left. Will you escape or be trapped with me foreeeveeer," Sanders asks when the game is almost finished.
According to Eater:
The press release notes that this VR exercise takes workers through the chicken cooking process in just 10 minutes, as opposed to the 25 minutes it takes IRL, so perhaps the idea here is to speed up the training process (and to avoid potentially wasting product). Or hey, maybe somebody at KFC HQ just got a really good deal on a whole pallet of Oculus Rifts.
According to a KFC spokesperson, though, the VR won’t replace hands-on experience: “The game is intended to supplement the existing Chicken Mastery program, not replace it...This is intended to be a fun way to celebrate the work KFC’s more than 19,000 cooks do every day in every restaurant across the U.S. in an engaging way.”
