KFC Accepts Customer Coupon that Expired in 1986 Because Why Not

If one of your New Year's resolutions involved cleaning out your desk drawers and seeing what's slipped between your sofa cushions, you might want to hang on to any old fast food coupons you find.

One North Carolina man recently managed to save six bucks on his KFC order, even though the coupon he gave the cashier expired during the Reagan administration.

In 1986, loyal Kentucky Fried Chicken customer Paul Boyd scored a coupon for one of the restaurant's locations in Marion, North Carolina. The coupon—which had Colonel Sanders' face printed in the upper right corner—allowed members of the coveted Tuesday Special Club to score a three-piece meal for $2.59 on any Tuesday at one of the colonel's restaurants in six neighbouring cities. The expiration date? December 31, 1986.

For whatever reason, Boyd never cashed that coupon in, and instead kept it in his wallet to remind him what could've been. (I'm guessing that's the reason. I'd be devastated at the loss of a three-piece meal deal). "It's been kind of a conversation piece since then," Boyd told McDowell News.com. "My wife says I never throw anything away."

But as New Year's Eve approached, Boyd decided to celebrate the coupon's 30th birthday by cashing it in at a KFC restaurant that didn't even exist when he tucked the Colonel into his wallet, three decades ago. (The location that issued the coupon is now something called Eddie's Pizza and Pasta).

He took it to a nearby KFC, showed it to the manager and, sure enough, he got his three-piece chicken dinner for $2.59. And it wasn't even a Tuesday! That coupon saved Boyd six dollars off the meal's current price of $8.53. (According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Consumer Price Index inflation calculator, $2.59 in 1986 is worth about $5.70 today, so the Colonel is doing a pretty good job of fattening his own wallet).

"We're always going to honour any [KFC] coupon that comes across our path," the restaurant's Assistant Manager Paul Platt told the news outlet.

If I unearth an antique coupon under my own sofa cushions, I know where I'm going first.