Kentucky Fried Chicken was born thanks to Harland Sanders, better known as Colonel Sanders, who was born on September 9, 1890 in Henryville, Indiana in the United States.
It all started when his father died when he was 5 years old, so he had to work and learn to cook from a young age.
At the age of 12, he had to leave school to help on the family farm, and later worked various jobs, until in 1929 he opened a gas station in North Corbin, Kentucky.
A year later, in 1930, Harland had in mind to offer a food service for travelers who stopped to refuel at his gas station; He thought that longer trips were being made and that it could be a good business to sell food, that´s how he enabled the premises to open a small restaurant, which he called Sanders Cafe. In this restaurant he began to prepare fried chicken from his own recipe, thus creating what we know today as a “service station”. At that time Sanders made the chicken with a frying pan and the food took half an hour to be ready.
By 1939 Sanders introduced a pressure fryer that reduced waiting time, and a year later, in 1940, he patented his recipe for fried chicken, which he called the Original Recipe.
In all that time the demand for chicken grew, and Sanders took advantage of his hit to expand his restaurant and open a motel, the first in Kentucky. In addition, his work as a chef was recognized by the state governor, who awarded him the title of colonel of Kentucky in 1935.
During World War II, Sanders was forced to close his motel, and shortly thereafter he sold his restaurant after learning that state authorities intended to build a highway that would reduce traffic on the road where his restaurant was located.
After this, Sanders stopped touring the country in his car to make deals with restaurants that would sell his fried chicken recipe in exchange for 1 cent for each piece of chicken sold.
By 1952, when Sanders was 62, he had raised enough money to open a restaurant in Salt Lake City, Utah, under the name of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
By the 1960s, Sanders had 600 stores with its product in the United States and Canada. That same year, unable to handle the level of business, he sold his US stock for $2 million to a group of investors, including John Brown Jr., who later was the governor of Kentucky. In addition, the company offered him a lifetime salary of $40,000 a year, later increased to $200,000, to remain an ambassador and public relations officer for Kentucky Fried Chicken until the day he died.
But in 1970 Sanders left the board of directors of Kentucky Fired Chicken, but he continued to be the advertising image.
In 1971 the Heublein alcoholic beverage company bought the group for 700 million dollars, and was in charge of renovating the restaurants.
Later, on December 16, 1980, Colonel Sanders died at the age of 90, a victim of acute leukemia that had been detected 6 months before his death. He was buried in his trademark attire in Corbin, Kentucky Cemetery. In his honor, the new owners kept his face as the Kentucky Fried Chicken logo.
Following this, tobacco company R. J. Reynolds took over Heublein in 1982 and took control of all of its businesses, including Kentucky Fried Chicken. The new owners controlled the growth of the franchises in the United States and began an expansion of the brand abroad, opening its first restaurants in Europe.
In 1983 the group had 4,500 stores in the United States and more than 1,500 in 54 countries, being the 3rd American with the most stores abroad, only surpassed by McDonald's and Subway.
Later, in 1986, R. J. Reynolds put Kentucky Fried Chicken up for sale and PepsiCo, which already controlled Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, bought the company for $840 million.
Finally, in 1991, the company changed its trademark to KFC, keeping only the acronym in its advertising and corporate image.
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