KFC China yesterday admitted that its soybean milk was made from liquid concentrate or powder, after an outcry from Chinese consumers who felt they were being cheated.

The fast food giant made the announcement after a picture of several boxes of soybean milk powder piled in front of a KFC restaurant in southern China's Guangdong Province was posted on microblog site Weibo.com. The picture has been forwarded more than 30,000 times.

A KFC spokesman said that most of its restaurants in Beijing used liquid concentrate to make the soybean milk while those in other cities and regions, including Shanghai, used powders.

KFC said it had developed new formula and manufacturing technologies for the soybean powder in partnership with Yihai Kerry Investment Co, one of the largest food-processing groups in China.

Later, Heilongjiang Province-based Longwang Food Co was added as a second supplier.

"The current workmanship for freshly ground soy milk may have problems in fully meeting our quality and safety requirements among more than 3,000 restaurants in China, while the normal soy milk powder available on the market is also simply processed and can't meet our taste standard," KFC said.

Though the company had never claimed that its soy milk was freshly ground in the kitchen, domestic consumers still expressed their anger.

"Even soybean milk sold at street food stalls is freshly boiled. Such expensive soybean milk of KFC was a mixture of water and powder?" one consumer wrote in an online post.

Another post read: "From their TV advertisement, I never see any implications that the soy milk is made by powder. I was totally misled."

In addition to whether the soy milk is freshly made or not, some consumers felt they were being overcharged. Cups of KFC's hot mellow soybean milk cost 5.50 yuan (85 US cents) while a cold one is 6.50 yuan.

An online search for "KFC soybean milk powder" found packs said to be supplied to KFC on sale at 15 yuan, according to a report in the Beijing Times. Based on the ratio of water and powder, the cost for each cup was estimated at 0.70 yuan, the newspaper said.

A customer who said he ordered soybean milk every time he visited the restaurant said: "I thought it was freshly made because it is not sold cheap. But now it turns out it's not worth it."

According to an industry insider, freshly produced soy milk usually tastes better than that made from powder or concentrate and it costs more because restaurants need extra staff to make it and they have to be trained to do so.

Officials from two other major Chinese-style food chains - Yonghe King and Taiwan-based Yon Ho - said the soy milk they sold was freshly made on the premises. Each cup of soybean milk is priced at 4 yuan at Yon Ho outlets while Yonghe King charges 2 yuan.

Food experts said that what KFC was doing was not unusual in the industry. Many chains adopt a system in which a central kitchen supplies partly prepared food to be finished at their branches. This helps keep costs low.

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