KFC expands $10 Tuesday into weekday Bucket of the Day deal

KFC just took one of its simplest value plays and made it a weekday habit. The chain began rolling out Bucket of the Day on May 4, replacing the old once-a-week $10 Tuesday with a different $10 bucket on each weekday, a move that makes value feel less like a special and more like a standing offer.

The new lineup rotates through buckets such as a 24-piece nugget bucket, an 8-piece drums-and-thighs bucket and a 10-wings bucket, with some coverage also noting a Boneless Bucket for One tied to the launch. KFC paired the deal with two new sauces, Honey Chili Crisp and Jalapeño Ranch, and wrapped the whole push in a Saucy Season campaign built around dipping, drenching and dunking. The chain said the weekday buckets are available at participating restaurants, which gives it a flexible way to push traffic without locking every store into the same item mix.

For McDonald’s crew members and managers, the bigger signal is not the chicken itself. It is the shift in how chains are using value to shape traffic. A one-day deal can create a spike; a weekday platform is meant to retrain guests to think of the brand as a regular stop, not a Friday or Tuesday exception. That matters on the line, where more predictable traffic can help with labor planning, prep and throughput, but also raises the stakes if the offer is too complex for crews to execute cleanly.

KFC has been building toward this for months. In March, it launched a separate Value Feast lineup with Box Feasts starting at $7, and framed that move as an answer to the value wars. McDonald’s responded in April with a revamped McValue menu that added a new Under $3 Menu and a $4 Breakfast Meal Deal, saying the relaunch built on the successful 2025 debut of McValue. The back-and-forth shows how quickly value has become a weapon across dayparts, not just at lunch or dinner.

That pressure is especially relevant in chicken, where KFC has been trying to steady its business after executives pointed to weather and competitor promotions when U.S. same-store sales fell 7% in the first quarter of 2024. KFC division chief Scott Mezvinsky has been publicly talking up the brand’s direction this spring, including at the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything event in May. For the restaurant industry, the message is clear: the next fight is not just about being cheap once a week. It is about keeping a low price visible often enough to change where guests go, when they go and how hard crews have to work to keep up.