Colonel Sanders otherwise known as Harland Sanders, was the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken and it’s famous seasoned chicken. Although he was always a cook, Harland, later known as the Colonel, didn’t harness his talent for commercial use until he was over 40 years of age.
Harland Sanders was born on September 9, 1890 in Henryville, Indiana to a butcher, Wilbert Sanders, and a homemaker, Margaret Ann Dunleavy. At the age of six, Sanders lost his father and was forced to help his mother care for his younger siblings. Even at his young age, Sanders helped cook and quickly mastered regional recipes to the delight of his family.
A few years later, when Sanders was in the seventh grade, he dropped out of school to further care for his family. Although he worked at nearby farm for a while, his mother remarried in order to support the family and Sanders was forced to relocate to suburban Indianapolis. Sanders did not get along with his new stepfather and moved to Clark County, Indiana soon thereafter.
He worked as a farmer, then a streetcar driver, and eventually enlisted in the Army to spend a year in Cuba. He married Josephine King in 1908 with whom he had three children. Their marriage ended in 1947.
When he moved back to Indiana, Sanders worked as a steamboat driver and eventually helped on the railroad. During his time with the railroad, Sanders began taking a correspondence course with Southern University in order to earn his law degree. With the help of local officials, Sanders was able to complete his studies and practice law from 1915 into the 1920s in Little Rock, Arkansas. His law career ended when he physically fought a client in the courtroom so Sanders decided to move to Corbin, Kentucky and open a service station.
After interacting with hungry customers, Sanders decided to begin serving meals to travelers who stopped at his place for gas. Since there was no formal restaurant or eating area at the station, Sanders served food from a table at the station’s living quarters. Serving families and travelers gave Sanders the idea of creating meals that people could take with them; entire Sunday dinners that were ready to eat and easy to carry.
As his popularity grew and people got word of his cooking, and especially his chicken, Sanders moved his operation to a nearby motel that could seat 142 people. Sanders worked as a chef in his own kitchen and began perfecting this fried chicken recipe. In 1935, after his cooking had become very well known around the state, Governor Ruby Laffoon granted him the title of Kentucky Colonel. As a result of this title, Sanders began dressing like a “southern gentleman” and calling himself the Colonel as a matter of self-promotion.
Over the next twenty years he perfected his fried chicken recipe of 11 herbs and spices and made use of pressure frying the chicken in order to speed service. By 1956, however, Sanders was broke. The government has built a new highway that bypassed his Corbin store, causing the sale price to plummet. Sanders, living off of Social Security, took his cooker and his spices and traveled to restaurants to convince them to pay him to use his recipe. Smaller restaurants were willing to pay him a small fee for every chicken sold and, by 1960, Sanders had over 400 “franchises”.
Sanders sold his brand in 1964 but continued to work as the spokesman for Kentucky Fried Chicken. During his retirement he gave much of his profit away to charities and even adopted 78 foreign orphans. He passed away from leukemia on December 16, 1980 in Kentucky. A museum was erected in his name at the KFC headquarters in Louisville.
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I made a resolve then that I was going to amount to something if I could. And no hours, nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that there was in me. And I have done that ever since, and I win by it. I know.
There’s no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can’t do any business from there.
Colonel Sanders Biography
Colonel Sanders (1890-1980) created the Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food chain at the age of 66. Pride in his product, high standards, and brilliant marketing help to establish him as an innovator in the fast food industry.
Harland David Sanders was born on a farm in Henryville, Indiana on September 9, 1890. His parents, Wilbert Sanders, a butcher, and Margaret Ann Dunleavy, a homemaker, also had two younger children. Sanders’ father died when he was five, so his mother took a job peeling tomatoes in a canning factory and earned extra money by sewing at night. Sanders had to take care of his siblings, learning how to cook so he could feed them. He held his first job at the age of ten, working on a nearby farm. Because the family was so poor, Sanders left school after sixth grade so he could work full time. His mother, desperate to improve the financial situation of her family, married a produce farmer and moved the family to suburban Indianapolis when Sanders was 12. Sanders fought often with his new stepfather. Within a year, his mother sent him back to Clark county, Indiana.
Sanders worked as a farmhand for $15 a month, plus room and board, until he was 15 years old. He was then able to get a job as a streetcar conductor in New Albany, Indiana. In 1906, while still under age, Sanders enlisted in the U.S. Army and spent a year as a soldier in Cuba. After completing his military service, Sanders married Josephine King in Jasper, Alabama. The couple had three children. During the early years of their marriage, Sanders and his family moved to Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and finally back to Indiana. They divorced in 1947.
Launched First Company
Sanders held a variety of jobs. He sold insurance in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Then he started a steamboat ferry company that operated on the Ohio River between Jeffersonville and Louisville, Kentucky. Eventually, Sanders took a job as secretary of the Columbus chamber of commerce. There he met an inventor who discovered how to operate natural gas lamps on a gas derived from carbide. Sanders bought the patent rights and launched a manufacturing company. Unfortunately, a rural electrification program made his company’s product obsolete.
While working as a railroad man for the Illinois Central Railroad, Sanders took a correspondence course that allowed him to earn a law degree from Southern University. A local judge permitted him to use his law library and local lawyers helped his studies by explaining law terminology. When he lost his job with the railroad, Sanders began practicing law. He had some success in the legal field from about 1915 to the early 1920s, working in the Justice of the Peace courts in Little Rock, Arkansas. Sanders ruined his legal career, however, by getting into a brawl with a client in the courtroom. Although found innocent of assault and battery, Sanders’ legal practice was through.
Became an Honorary Colonel
In 1929, Sanders moved to Corbin, Kentucky, a small town at the edge of the Appalachian Mountains, and opened a gas station along U.S. Route 25. When tourists and traveling salespeople asked Sanders where they could get something to eat nearby, he got the idea of opening a small restaurant next to the gas station. The restaurant had one table and six chairs and specialized in Southern cooking such as pan fried chicken, ham, vegetables, and biscuits. Sanders moved his establishment across the street to a bigger location, with room for 142 seats, a motel and a service station. He took an eight-week course in restaurant and hotel management from Cornell University to learn more about the business. Sanders’ cafe had a homey atmosphere, with no menu, but good food. But when restaurant critic, Duncan Hines, listed Sanders’ place in Adventures in Good Eatingin the 1930s, its popularity increased.
In 1935, the popular cafe so impressed Governor Ruby Laffoon that he made Sanders an honorary Kentucky colonel for his contribution to state cuisine. In 1937, Sanders tried to start a restaurant chain in Kentucky, but his attempt failed. Two years later, he opened another motel and restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina, but this too failed.
Sanders continued to alter his chicken recipe to get the seasonings just right. In 1939, he devised a method to cook chicken quickly because customers would not wait 45 minutes for a batch to be fried up in an iron pan. Sanders used a pressure cooker, a new invention at the time, to cook chicken in nine minutes. He found that chicken cooked in this manner turned out to be moist and flavorful. Sanders’ method is still being used today.
In 1949, Sanders was once again honored with the title of Kentucky colonel, this time by Lieutenant Governor Lawrence Weatherby. Sanders began using the title of “Colonel” and dressing in a white suit, white shirt, black string tie, black shoes, white mustache and goatee, and a cane–giving himself the appearance of a gentleman from the Old South. In 1949, Sanders arried Claudia Ledington, an employee.
During World War II, gas rationing meant less travel, so Sanders had to shut down his motel. It reopened when the war ended. By 1953, his café was worth $165,000. In the early 1950s, Sanders signed up a few restaurant owners in an early form of franchise. He would ship them his seasoning, made from a secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices, if they agreed to pay him five cents for every chicken cooked with it. Pete Harman, a Utah restaurant owner who had met Sanders in Chicago at a seminar for restaurateurs, was his first franchisee. Harman, already a successful businessman, is credited with creating the marketing strategies that made Sanders’ business a success. Harman is also responsible for inventing the name “Kentucky Fried Chicken,” introducing the takeout bucket, and creating the slogan, “finger lickin’ good.”
In 1956, the federal government made plans to build a new highway, bypassing Corbin. The value of Sanders’ site plummeted, and he auctioned off the property for $75,000 to pay his debts. At the age of 66 he was almost broke, living off a monthly Social Security check of $105 and some savings. Sanders then moved to Shelbyville, Kentucky.
A Secret Recipe Spelled Success
With nothing to lose, Sanders took his spices and pressure cooker and traveled throughout the U.S. in his 1946 Ford. He visited restaurants, trying to convince the owners to use his recipe. Sanders had no luck with the better restaurants, said John Neal, a franchisee. “They all threw him out of their places. He found a lot of wonderful hard-working men and women who operated various and sundry restaurants who took his methods and paid him a nickel a head. The Colonel shipped them the seasoning. That’s literally how he got started.”
By 1960, Sanders had 400 franchisees, and his image was being used to sell chicken throughout the country. By 1963, he made $300,000 a year in profits, before taxes. In 1996, the number of franchises had grown to over 5,000 units in the U.S. and 4,500 overseas. Sanders carefully guarded his secret recipe of herbs and spices, hiring two different suppliers to mix up batches, which he would then combine himself and mail to franchisees.
Sanders was a perfectionist. He often burst into a restaurant’s kitchen to scold an employee for not cooking his gravy correctly. Sanders would then show him how to cook it right. “The thing I remember about the Colonel is that he was very particular about doing things right,” said Jackie Trujillo, chairman of Harman Management. “He used to visit us often,” she said. “Service, quality and cleanliness was No. 1. He never backed down from that.”
Sold Company to Investors
In 1964, Sanders sold out to a group of investors, including John Y. Brown, Jr. and Jack Massey, for $2 million. He had been concerned about selling the business because he feared that the new owners might not maintain a high quality product. Friends and family finally persuaded the 74-year-old to part with his company. On January 6, 1964, he closed the deal. Besides the $2 million, he received a lifetime salary of $40,000 a year (later raised to $75,000). Sanders served as the company spokesman, making personal appearances and television commercials. He held on to his Canadian rights in the company and established a foundation in Canada, turning over his profits to charities, such as churches, hospitals, the Boy Scouts, and the Salvation Army. He also adopted 78 foreign orphans.
Kentucky Fried Chicken went public in 1969, and was acquired by Heublein Inc. two years later. In 1974, Sanders sued the company because he did not like changes they had made to the product. The suit was settled out of court for over a million dollars. R.J. Reynolds Industries acquired Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1982. It then passed to PepsiCo in 1986 for $840 million.
Honored with Museum and Landmark
In 1974, Sanders published his autobiography, Life As I Have Known It Has Been Finger Lickin’ Good. His daughter, Margaret Sanders, published Eleven Herbs and a Spicy Daughter: Col. Sanders’ Secret of Success, in 1994.
Though he is said to have had a bad temper, Sanders inspired many in the restaurant industry by helping his franchisees, introducing a love for his product, and maintaining high standards. He has had a lasting impact on fast food, something he helped create. Industry leaders credit Sanders with being a stellar marketer. His innovations included selling busy people buckets of chicken to take home and using a character, himself, to sell a product.
Sanders died in Shelbyville, Kentucky on December 16, 1980, after a seven-month battle with leukemia. The Colonel Sanders Museum at Kentucky Fried Chicken headquarters in Louisville contains a life-sized statue of Sanders in a small theater, his office–exactly as he left it, his white linen suit, cane, shirt and tie, one of his wife’s dresses, and his original pressure cooker. In 1972, his first restaurant was named a Kentucky historical landmark.
After many years of serving his secret fried chicken recipe in his local restaurant, Colonel Harland Sanders found himself in need of a new career. At the age of 65, he began to collect his social security check of about $100 as he wondered how he was going to survive financially.
Colonel Sanders Background
Growing up in Indiana, household responsibilities were often left to him while his mother worked to support the family after his father’s early death. This is how he developed his keen cooking skills as he helped his mother take care of the other children in his family.
Several different jobs later, Sanders began his entrepreneurial career running a service station in Kentucky while serving his special chicken in a dining area within. As business grew, he relocated to a restaurant close by in order to make his original recipe with its blend of eleven herbs and spices accessible to even more customers. He also added a motel to the business.
In 1935, at forty-five years old, Sanders was dubbed a Kentucky Colonel by the Governor, in recognition of his fabulous cooking skills. Subsequently, in 1940 Sanders created his well-known “Original Recipe.”
Colonel Sanders’ New Cooking Technique
Sanders originally prepared his chicken in an iron skillet but soon realized that was not efficient in a restaurant setting. In order to decrease the wait time for his customers, Sanders modified his cooking procedure by making use of a pressure fryer.
Colonel Sanders’ Entrepreneurial Drive
The Sanders Court & Café catered mainly to travelers on their way to Florida through the town of Corbin, Kentucky. However, in the early 1950′s, a new interstate was in the works that would cause a great loss in business, forcing Sanders to retire and sell his restaurant.
However, the government check was small and Sanders wasn’t willing to just sit still and try to make due. He believed there was an opportunity to market his chicken to restaurant owners across the U.S.
In his travels, he was rejected on many occasions, laughed at about his attire of his starched white shirt and white pants. However, Sanders persevered, and after a little over 1,000 visits, he finally persuaded Pete Harman in South Salt Lake, Utah to partner with him. They launched the first “Kentucky Fried Chicken” site in 1952.
In the early 1960′s there were over 600 franchised locations in the U.S. and Canada selling the delectable chicken. Subsequently, in 1964 Sanders sold the franchising operation for $2 million. The franchise has been sold three other times since then and continues to be a well-known successful business.
Colonel Harland David Sanders (September 9, 1890 – December 16, 1980), better known as Colonel Sanders, was the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). His picture appears on their boxes to this day, and a stylized graphic of his face is atrademark of the corporation.
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Sanders was born in Henryville, Indiana. His father died when he was six years old, and since his mother worked, he was forced to cook for his family. During his teen years, Sanders worked many jobs, including firefighter, steamboat driver, insurance salesman and a private in Cuba.
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At the age of 40, Sanders made chicken for people who passed by his service station in Corbin, Kentucky. He didn’t have a restaurant then, but served the diners in his living quarters in the service station. Eventually, his local popularity grew, and Harland moved to a motel and restaurant that seated 142 people and began working as the chef. Over the next nine years, he perfected his method of cooking chicken that used the same eleven herbs and spices that are used today at KFC. He also made use of a pressure cooker that enhanced the flavor and allowed the chicken to be cooked much faster than pan-frying. He was given the honorary title “Kentucky colonel” in 1935 by Governor Ruby Laffoon. Unlike most people who receive this title, Sanders chose to call himself “Colonel” and to dress in a stereotypical “southern gentleman” costume as a way of self-promotion.
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Service station - Corbin, Kentucky - Motel -Chef - Herb - Spice - Pressure cooker -Kentucky colonel - 1935 - Ruby Laffoon
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Sanders was forced to sell his property in order to make way for Interstate 75. He lived off of his Social Security checks, and based his entire career on his ability to cook. Confident of the quality of his fried chicken, the Colonel devoted himself to the chicken franchising business that he started in 1952, the first franchise being setup on 4100 South State Street in Salt Lake City. He traveled across the country by car from restaurant to restaurant, cooking batches of chicken for restaurant owners and their employees. If the reaction was favorable, he entered into a handshake agreement on a deal that stipulated a payment to him of a nickel for each chicken the restaurant sold. His devoted work turned his small business, Kentucky Fried Chicken, into one of the largest fast food chains in existence. He himself became one of the most recognizable people in the world.
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Sanders moved the headquarters of his business to a new location nearShelbyville, Kentucky and in 1964, sold it to a group of investors headed by futureKentucky Governor John Y. Brown, Jr. Sanders, after retiring as a cook, worked as its company spokesman for most of the rest of his life. He appeared in many of his company’s television commercials between the 1950s and 1970s, and remained outspoken about the quality of the KFC product, often so with a lively vocabulary.
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He also retained ownership of the headquarters building and soon opened a new restaurant in it. KFC’s new owners owned the name Colonel Sanders as it pertained to the restaurant business, so Sanders decided to name his new restaurant Claudia Sanders’ Dinner House after his wife. As of 2005, this restaurant is still operating and is decorated with many photographs and memorabilia from the Sanders family.
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Sanders died at the age of 90 of leukemia. He was buried in his characteristic white suit and black bow tie in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. A later cartoon version of Colonel Sanders (voiced by actor Randy Quaid) has appeared in more recent KFC commercials, and he has an almost-identical impersonator, the latter to the considerable consternation of many in the Sanders family.
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To this day, the Colonel’s secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices remains one of the best-kept trade secrets in business. The original, handwritten recipe is locked securely in a vault in Louisville, with partial copies stored elsewhere as backup. The two suppliers of the seasonings each only provide parts of the recipe, and do not know each other’s identity. Not even the company’s president knows the ingredient list, and the few people who do are subject to a strictconfidentiality agreement. Several people have contacted KFC, claiming to have found copies of the recipe, but none have ever been correct. A couple who purchased the Colonel’s original home found another handwritten recipe in the basement, and, although it was written by Sanders, it was determined to be nothing like the original.
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