Why this iconic KFC location accidentally looks like a bucket

While you were scrolling through social media, you might have come across a KFC location that looks oddly familiar. That’s because it’s shaped like one of the chain’s iconic buckets, but the reason why it ended up like this might surprise you. 

The bucket-shaped KFC in question is located in L.A.’s Koreatown, and stands two stories high, in a white cylindrical shape, flanked by red stripes just like you might imagine to find on the chain’s sharing buckets. 

It has a long history, being built somewhere between 1989 and 1990, which means that it opened approximately 40 years after KFC first opened its doors to customers. 

Why is the KFC in Koreatown shaped like a bucket?

So why is the Koreatown location designed to look the way it does, appearing as a play on the brand’s most popular menu item? Well, it turns out that the whole thing was actually an accident. 

Jack Wilke, who was the owner of several KFC restaurants across LA at the time was a huge art fan and fell in love with Googie architecture, which is a type of futuristic design influenced by the Space Age. 

He contacted architects Elyse Grinstein and Jeffrey Daniels, who he hoped could encapsulate his dream of turning his 8,000 square feet space into something to behold.

“The intent was to create a constructivist building,” Daniels revealed in LAmag in 2018, a combination of modern engineering and technology. 

It turned out that the architects employed by Wilkie didn’t set out to make the building look like a bucket, creating what is now considered to be a happy accident

The bucket-shaped KFC still has people talking

Even though the building was designed over three decades ago now, it still manages to capture people’s imagination. There are several Reddit threads online discussing the allure of the building and sharing stories about their experiences there. 

“I worked there when I was a teenager back in the nineties. It even had a dumb waiter to send people’s orders upstairs to the seating area,” one former employee revealed. 

“Every Sunday my family would go to the church across the street from this KFC and every Sunday I would ditch bible study class and hang out at this KFC… good memories,” another shared. 

“Oh, this brings back memories. I used to live a few blocks away from here during my childhood. I loved eating on the 2nd floor,” a third wrote in. 

This isn’t the only wacky fast food location that’s got people talking. There’s a McDonald’s located in New Mexico that’s shaped like a UFO, and the reason is pretty bizarre.