The World's Fanciest KFC Is Located In New York State

KFC is many things — delicious, salty, seasoned with 11 herbs and spices that are supposedly a secret — but "fancy" is not one of them. It's a place where you go to eat with your hands, to lick your fingers clean, to combine fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy into some unholy yet undeniably tasty slurry. Heck, most people who go to KFC don't dine in at all, they just take their bags and go. And yet, one location in Painted Post, a town in upstate New York, is designed specifically for dining in style thanks to some glass frontage and stylish décor. 

There is a good reason why KFC opened this more upscale restaurant; KFC, like other fast food brands, has been trying to encourage people to dine in a little more by making its restaurants more appealing to young adults. Other brands, including McDonald's, have been working to make their buildings less colorful and more tasteful (in the process making them look more like warehouses than someplace people would want to visit, but whatever). KFC, on the other hand, is thinking outside the box — or the bucket, as the case may be. And so we have KFC's Painted Post location which is lovingly nicknamed "The Crystal Bucket."

Painted Post saw the opening of this unusual KFC in 2022. The building wasn't constructed for this purpose. Instead, it was converted from an old bank after a real estate director noticed that the building's big glass rotunda bore more than a passing resemblance to a bucket. (It's not the only KFC location that happens to be bucket shaped.) The hanging glass light fixtures and stately wooden ceiling make this restaurant a far cry from the hole in the wall you're used to picking your KFC up from, but that's not all the location has to offer. The old bank vault now supposedly contains the recipe for the chain's 11 herbs and spices mixture (which is, again, not that much of a secret).

Interestingly, despite the location encouraging on-site dining, the restaurant also has a few of the "next generation" innovations KFC implemented to encourage off-site dining. These include pickup cubbies and ample parking spaces. (There's no buffet, although KFC all-you-can-eat-buffets do still exist.) 

Combining fast food with an upmarket vibe is a difficult needle to thread. However, based on The Crystal Bucket having already become an "icon" in Painted Post, it's safe to say that, on this occasion, KFC have managed to do it.