KFC has a crazy new strategy to win over the ever-dwindling pool of fast food lovers: make their chicken taste good. The company is implementing this bold new strategy (which it calls “Re-Colonelization” because consultants gotta make money somehow) by doing something completely radical and teaching its cooks how to properly make fried chicken.

The company said that it has spent the last six months re-training all of KFC’s employees to return to a level of quality found in the early years of the restaurant. We presume that that down-home process didn’t involve internal organs.

“This wasn’t a media stunt where our restaurants closed for a few hours,” said KFC U.S. President Jason Marker in an obvious dig at Chipotle. “Over the past six months we have invested more than 100,000 hours retraining more than 20,000 employees in cooking and serving Kentucky Fried Chicken the way the Colonel intended.”

The company is putting its money where its mouth is, spending hundreds of millions to update kitchen equipment in almost all of its restaurants. They’re also rolling out a new guarantee that will allow anyone who doesn’t like their chicken to turn it in for a replacement.

“To everyone who grew up with the familiar taste of KFC and has turned away from us in recent years, you can come back again,” said Marker, tears falling from his eyes as feral bands of one-time KFC eaters appeared on the horizon and stumbled toward his outstretched arms. Okay, the last part isn’t true, but the fact is: Dude is passionate about his chicken.

(Via Grub Street)