Garbage?

I dunno if I'd go that far. Overpriced for what you get? Absolutely.

The problem with kfc now is the consistency. Other comments have made note of that already.

In the past though, it was consistent. And it was, on average, middle high tier back then. Breasts would be juicy still, and the various breading versions were good enough to be cravable, if not as good as home made or from a non chain restaurant.

The extra crispy was reliably extra crispy in particular.

Somewhere in the nineties, it started falling off. Greasier, drier, with the grease also tasting unpleasant (as compared to previous from kfc where the off taste wasn't present)

Fried chicken isn't really that hard to get right when you have good fryers. The kind they use hold heat really well by virtue of how much oil they hold. So the fact that it's ever greasy instead of lightly oiled on the outside is a sign they're doing something wrong. If you had a fryer like that at home, you should be able to turn out amazing fried foods every single time. Even shitty home fryers can get the job done if you do small enough batches. Hell, in that regard even pan frying in your old cast iron can do better than what kfc started becoming in the 90s assuming you kept your batches small.

All of that being said, it is still at least edible. The company just lost being good the way it used to be. It was never great, but it was something that was worth getting once a month on a sunday.

But it isn't just the chicken that's gone downhill. Most of their sides have gone meh to bad. Their gravy is pretty much the same, but they changed something about the mashed potatoes back in the late 90s to where the texture is just not pleasant. Their biscuits were always mid at best, but they're always too greasy now. I suspect they changed the source of their shortening, or their source changed how they make it. That suspicion comes from having known enough workers to be confident that the recipe itself is unchanged.

The other sides (with one exception) are not good. Edible, but you'll regret it. The slaw is still sometimes good to great. It used to be consistently good to great. I'm not sure what they changed, unless it's in storage or batch size, but it usually has the slightly rancid or fishy scent to it now. Slaw is pretty hard to fuck up (though also hard to make really great), so it points to the whole chain having shifted to lower standards across the board.

Never been outside the country at all, so I can't compare in that way. But it's always been popular here in the us, so I've had it up and down the eastern seaboard.