You’ll recognise those colours anywhere. Photo: James Coleman.
This month marks 40 years since an accountant from the UK, together with his wife, bought a chicken shop in Woden plaza and christened it ‘Kingsley’s Chicken’.
Yep, we’ve had the “unbelievable chicken and awesome chips” all to ourselves (and Queanbeyan) for four decades now.
And local “video magazine” Mustard Flats, with support from the ACT Government, has produced a short documentary to mark the occasion and tell its tale.
“The documentary no one asked for, but Canberra needed,” the description reads.
“While Kingsley’s management didn’t want to be involved, we dedicated this film to the King of Canberra: its unbelievable chicken and its awesome chips.”
The first Kingsley’s store opened in November 1984, the work of husband-and-wife team Kingsley Varr and Jenny Stead.
Varr had trained as an accountant in Malaysia and Britain but threw in the towel on these credentials when he moved here and realised he’d have to do further study to practise in Australia.
Woden was followed by a second shop in Weston in 1985 and an ill-fated one in Fyshwick in 1987 – it closed less than a year in – before Kingsley’s expanded to Erindale in 1991.
It now has a presence in Belconnen, Kippax, Lanyon, Tuggeranong, and even over the border in Queanbeyan.
In 1991, Varr told The Canberra Times, “The reason we can compete with stores like Kentucky is that we’re like the corner store”.
“In the corner store, we have the same person serving you year in, year out,” he said.
“We recognise customers; we get to know our customers, and we don’t have the same frequent staff turnover like other stores … We try to give value for money to the customer and look to provide a family service and give them their money’s worth.”
As for the slogan, “unbelievable chicken, awesome chips”, that was literally plucked out of the mouths of people waiting at the Woden bus interchange.
The Weston Creek shop starred in the 2013 film Galore. Photo: James Coleman.
In the documentary called ‘Kingsley’s Chicken: 40 years of the iconic chicken shop’, former marketing manager Mark Kulasingham – who started as a “chip chucker” in 1991 – explains how the company took “big bags of chips and gravy down” to the old Woden bus interchange to “find out what the public says”.
“We tried it with adults and teenagers and one of the things that I noticed was the word that kept coming up was ‘awesome’ … And the rest is history. The slogan was born.”
Laughably bad ads on TV featuring talking chillis and talking burgers, usually manipulated off-camera by strings, also helped endear Kingsley’s with the locals too.
“It made no sense, but people were ringing up and going, ‘What the hell is your ad about?'” Mark says.
“And we were like, ‘Yes!'”
The store in Weston also appeared in the 2013 film, Galore, a romance drama set in Canberra around the time of the 2003 bushfires.
In the documentary, former employees like Ghanaian-born, Canberra-bred hip-hop artist Citizen Kay and Queanbeyan-born poet and rapper Omar Musa also recount how Varr himself would often come into the kitchen to show them how it’s done.
Feeling hungry yet? Photo: James Coleman.
Citizen Kay reckons his time at Kingsley’s between 2008 and 2018 gave him much of the inspiration for his songs.
“Something was happening psychologically that was opening up room for ideas to flow and it wouldn’t be uncommon for me to – halfway through cooking chicken – quickly run to the back with my phone and voice memo an idea and come back,” he says.
Region contacted Kingley’s Chicken for comment but received no reply … maybe they were at lunch.
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