One of the most uncomplicated inventions in the world of culinary did not bring Michelin stars to Garland Sanders’ establishments. However, banal fried chicken turned out to be gold for the founder of the fast food chain KFC. Colonel Sanders started his super-successful business only in his seventies! And before that, he could with good reason be considered a complete and incurable loser. In his youth, Garland Sanders changed dozens of professions, but did not succeed in any of them.
How it all started
The history of KFC began with this six-person table at a gas station in North Corbin.
The parents of the future restaurateur were in the local Presbyterian community – perhaps the most puritanical of all varieties of Protestantism. The father was an auxiliary worker, fortunately in the “farm” state there was always enough work in the field or in the barn, and the mother sat with the children.
After the death of her husband (Garland was then five years old), Mrs. Sanders also had to get a job to support her family. Although over time, Garland himself, who replaced his mother at the stove, actually began to feed her. He learned to cook well, and at the age of ten he left school and went to work on one of the nearby farms for $ 2 a week. And two years later, a stepfather appeared in the family. From the very beginning, he disliked his stepson, often beat him, and his mother eventually sent her son away from sin, also to a farm, but located in the neighboring town of Greenwood.
Since then, Garland Sanders has been constantly changing professions and places of work for almost a quarter of a century, never staying anywhere for a long time. After working for some time as a tram conductor, at the age of 16 he enlisted in the army, lying at the recruiting office about his own age. Garland David Sanders founded the famous fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken in his 70s. And before that, he was known as a complete loser.
However, not having served even six months in Cuba (then actually an American colony), the volunteer soldier became a deserter. After escaping from the army, Sanders returned to his native state and got a job as a blacksmith’s assistant, and then as a steam locomotive stoker. They paid unbelievably better there, and Sanders even saved up some money to start a family. He got married, but just in time for the birth of his first child, a letter arrived from the railway company – with a notice of dismissal.
This time, making a bet, oddly enough, on those same chickens. Remembering his mother’s lessons in the kitchen, Sanders decided to open an eatery at his gas station. The main hit on the menu was “Garland Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken, made to a special recipe with 11 herbs and spices.” The beginning was more than modest – one table for six people. But a year later, a diner in North Corbin, Kentucky, has grown into a well-respected establishment with a hundred and fifty seats. Now it bore the chic name of Sanders Court & Cafe and brought the owner and the chef in one person more money than a gas station! Things got so good that Sanders happened to buy a motel across the street.
It was a smart purchase – at the end of the first “five-year plan” people poured into the Sanders institution, and people came to taste his signature chickens even from other cities. According to Garland himself, in those days he prepared his signature seasoning in bags, stirring flour and spices with a shovel on the concrete floor in the back room of the establishment – like cement. In 1936, the governor of the state awarded Garland Sanders the title of “Honorary Colonel of the State of Kentucky.” Not for military exploits, but for impressive victories in the field of catering! However, in America these “military ranks” were not given to anyone and for what.
Colonel’s know-how
For three quarters of a century, this recipe has grown into legends and to this day is the main and strictly guarded trade secret of the international fast food giant – KFC Corporation. However, as is the case with the “secret” ingredients of “Coca-Cola”, which the whole world drinks, the secret of cooking “Kentucky chicken” may well be an open secret today.
However, according to the official corporate story, the individual ingredients of the mysterious seasoning that makes Kentucky chicken “so delicious that you lick your fingers” (Finger lickin’ good – one of KFC’s advertising slogans) are produced at various enterprises scattered throughout the United States. And the full original recipe, handwritten on a piece of paper by Sanders himself, is kept like the apple of an eye in a safe at the corporate headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky.
Only two top managers of the company allegedly have access to the safe, and their names and positions are also kept secret. According to one of the anonymous “specially admitted”, so far no one has been able to unravel the secret of the “golden” chickens. But all this will not be soon. And half a century ago, in 1952, the owner of Sanders Court & Cafe, in his old age, decided on another innovation – not to limit himself to a roadside cafe, but to sell licenses for his culinary secret to everyone. In other words, he started franchising.
He did it not from a good life. The federal government’s Interstate 75 highway through Kentucky, which led to Florida, robbed the prosperous restaurateur of all his clientele in one year. The institution had to be sold in order to pay off creditors, and its owner, having barely reached retirement age, was again left with nothing – without a home, business and money. He could only count on a monthly pension of $105.
Don’t give up
The method of reaching potential buyers was unpretentious. Arriving at the next restaurant or cafe, Sanders asked for a mere trifle – to give him the opportunity in a quarter of an hour in front of the owner of the establishment to cook a signature chicken and include it in the establishment’s menu. If the customers liked the dish, Sanders promised to supply the owner of his miracle seasoning uninterruptedly, and in exchange he asked for 5 cents from each fried chicken sold. No written contracts imposing “colonel” (by that time he managed to gray and grow an equally trademark goatee, forever imprinted on the original recipe for Kentucky chicken, invented by Garland Sanders, kept as the apple of his eye in the safe of KFC headquarters in Louisville KFC logo ) did not conclude, preferring to confine himself to an honest word, sealed with a strong handshake. The first “sunk down on the idea” was a certain Pete Harman, the owner of a restaurant in Utah.
Together with Sanders, in August of the same 1952, they opened the first restaurant of the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain in the southern suburbs of Salt Lake City. From the very beginning there was no end to the visitors. For $3.50, each of them could taste 14 slices of tender, spiced chicken with mashed potatoes, generously poured over with thick sauce loved by Americans, and buns. Thus began the legend. By the early 1960s, there were already six hundred establishments in the United States and Canada that served “Kentucky chicken.”
And at the beginning of this century, more than 12,000 KFC restaurants operated in hundreds of countries around the world. True, the current Kentucky chicken contains less fat and therefore calories and is grilled. What to do – the demand of the time! In addition, the network’s establishments will offer visitors two types of sandwiches – “regular” (with the same fried chicken fillet, or minced chicken in sauce, or chicken slices, and all this is abundantly sprinkled with sesame seeds or corn crumbs) and Snackers. The latter are chicken slices and a variety of toppings—like in hamburgers (which is why these sandwiches are called “chicken burgers” in English, Australian and New Zealand KFC restaurants).
In addition, unlike other fast food chains that sell mainly variations of “cutlets in a bun”, the chicken assortment of KFC restaurants is not an example richer. Here you have chicken wings, and “nuggets”, and chicken with corn flakes, and the southern variation of french fries – potato wedges, and a variety of desserts. And also “submarine” sandwiches that have already become familiar to Russians – and “twisters” that are still rare in our northern latitudes (chicken wrapped with tomato and salad in Mexican “wraps” of dough – tortillas – and abundantly poured with mayonnaise or spicy salsa) .
KFC and health
In the countries of Southern Europe and the Middle East, no chain restaurant is complete without traditional kebabs – of course, chicken. There are still KFC restaurants in the world where you can order spicy pork ribs, German sauerkraut, Italian pasta, American hamburgers, grilled fish. In a word, international fast food in all its diversity. Such radical changes in relation to the original menu of KFC restaurants were influenced not only by the taste preferences of various peoples and ethnic groups. More recently, chefs at KFC restaurants fried chicken with so-called hydrogenated vegetable oils.
Here and an increase in the risk of diabetes, and a weakening of the immune system, and stress, depression, visual impairment, obesity, atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease, cancer … Under the weight of such accusations (and the millions of lawsuits that followed), the KFC restaurant chain was forced to refuse from cheap substitutes for natural oils and in 2006 officially announced that from now on – no “transgenes” when frying chickens! Fortunately, the creator of the Kentucky Fried Chickens network did not live to see these battles around his brainchild. The imposing gray-haired old man with glasses and a goatee, imprinted on the KFC logo, is Colonel Garland Sanders himself. Back in the early 1960s, Harland Sanders, who was already in his eighth decade, realized that he could no longer manage his business. And his heirs had no desire to manage the “chicken empire”.
Subsequent owners of KFC
And to all hints about old age and retirement, he invariably answered: “There is no reason to be rich in a cemetery. There is nowhere to do business.” In 1973, the colonel, increasingly reminiscent of a popular Santa Claus, even started a lawsuit with Heublein, Inc. (which by that time owned the network and the KFC trademark). Sanders accused the food giant of using his “face” to promote products that the Colonel had no part in creating. And two years later, Heublein, Inc. She filed a counterclaim against the active, precocious “retired” after Sanders publicly called the gravy served in “his” establishments “wallpaper-flavored sucks.”
Garland Sanders died in Louisville, which became his home, in December 1980 from pneumonia (the year before he had been diagnosed with leukemia). He was buried with a huge gathering of people in a luxurious mausoleum – as a true hero of the state. In the coffin, Colonel Sanders lay in his inimitable white suit and black drawstring tie, which were worn by real colonels of the regular army, fighting the Indians in the romantic times of the development of the Wild West. And the “fast food giant” he created had already changed more than one owner by that time.
In 1971, the aforementioned Hoblein, Inc. became the owner of the “chicken empire”, a decade later, the KFC chain was transferred to another giant, this time the tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, and in 1982 to a third, PepsiCo. The new owner incorporated the KFC chain into its restaurant division, Tricon Global Restaurants, which in turn spun off in 1997 and changed its name to Yum! Brands. In addition, Colonel Sanders’ nephew Lee Cummings had even earlier started his own Kentucky Chicken franchise (with his own recipe). But since the trademark Kentucky Fried Chicken is a kretrospective. Greenpeace activists have repeatedly accused KFC of complicity with other criminal corporations that are destroying the “lungs of the planet” – the Amazon jungle.
Indeed, the soybean oil on which the chickens were fried came to the KFC chain from another transnational giant, Cargill, which has long fought off accusations of illegal logging of tropical forests. As for KFC, she denied such accusations. To all the hints that it would be time to retire, Sanders invariably replied: “There is no reason to be rich in a cemetery. There is nowhere to do business.” What did KFC say to the concerned human rights activists of our little brothers? You will never guess – if you do not live in America! The response included the names of the specific farms where the chickens were raised and the explanation that on the farms in question, “chickens were raised in full respect of their rights.”
KFC today
As for the “real” KFC, the company has also “lit up” in the world of professional motorsport in the last two decades, becoming one of the sponsors of the most popular US circuit racing championship, NASCAR. And in 2006, KFC was the first company to create a logo visible from space! And although the championship of KFC was challenged by another company – Readymix, which created something similar back in 1965, this does not detract from the glory of KFC creatives. At the start of the 2006 advertising campaign, in a week they actually posted in the Mojave Desert the giant “face” of Colonel Sanders, familiar to the whole world, with the famous abbreviation KFC, which does not require deciphering.
It took 65 thousand square ceramic tiles with a side of 30 cm, so the total area of the pattern was about 6 thousand square meters. Like any large food company, the brainchild of Colonel Sanders in recent decades has not been ignored by numerous government organizations and public associations that advocate consumer rights. In addition, the company has been punished more than once for using a predominantly young and unskilled workforce – and therefore, as a rule, low-paid and unaware of any trade unions there. And, finally, the stormy activity of the “fast food empire” could not but attract the close attention of various “animal rights advocates”.
