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Colonel Harland David Sanders (September 9, 1890 – December 16, 1980) was an American businessman and founder of fast food chicken restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (also known as KFC). He later acted as the company's brand ambassador and symbol. His name and image are still symbols of the company.
Sanders held a number of jobs in his early life, such as steam engine stoker, insurance salesman, and filling station operator. He began selling fried chicken from his roadside restaurant in North Corbin, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. During that time, Sanders developed his "secret recipe" and his patented method of cooking chicken in a pressure fryer. Sanders recognized the potential of the restaurant franchising concept, and the first KFC franchise opened in South Salt Lake, Utah, in 1952. When his original restaurant closed, he devoted himself full-time to franchising his fried chicken throughout the country.
The company's rapid expansion across the United States and overseas became overwhelming for Sanders. In 1964, then 73 years old, he sold the company to a group of investors led by John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack C. Massey for $2 million ($19.6 million today). However, he retained control of operations in Canada, and he became a salaried brand ambassador for Kentucky Fried Chicken. In his later years, he became highly critical of the food served at KFC restaurants, and cost-cutting measures that he said reduced its quality, referring to the food as "God-damned slop" with a "wall-paper taste".
Life and career
1890–1906: early life
Harland David Sanders was born on September 9, 1890, in a four-room house located 3 miles east of Henryville, Indiana. He was the oldest of three children born to Wilbur David and Margaret Ann (née Dunlevy) Sanders His mother was of Irish and Dutch descent.[2] The family attended the Advent Christian Church.[3] His father was a mild and affectionate man who worked his 80-acre (32 ha) farm until he broke his leg in a fall. He then worked as a butcher in Henryville for two years. Sanders's mother was a devout Christian and strict parent, continually warning her children of "the evils of alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and whistling on Sundays".
Sanders's father died in 1895. His mother got work in a tomato cannery, and the young Harland was left to look after and cook for his siblings.[1] By the age of seven, in 1897, he was reportedly skilled with bread and vegetables, and improving with meat; the children foraged for food while their mother was away at work for days at a time. In 1899, his mother married Edward Park, but according to the 1900 census, his mother was widowed again. When he was 10, in 1900, Sanders began to work as a farmhand.
In 1902, Sanders's mother married William Broaddus and the family moved to Greenwood, Indiana. Sanders had a tumultuous relationship with his stepfather. In 1903, at age 12, he dropped out of seventh grade (later stating that "algebra's what drove [him] off") and went to live and work on a nearby farm. At age 13, he left home and took a job painting horse carriages in Indianapolis. When he was 14, he moved to southern Indiana to work as a farmhand.
1906–1930: various jobs
In 1906, with his mother's approval, Sanders left the area to live with his uncle in New Albany, Indiana. His uncle worked for the streetcar company, and secured Sanders a job as a conductor.
Sanders falsified his date of birth and enlisted in the United States Army in October 1906 (age 16), completing his service commitment as a wagoner (see teamster) in Cuba being awarded the Cuban Pacification Medal (Army). He was honorably discharged in February 1907 and moved to Sheffield, Alabama, where his uncle lived. There, he met his brother Clarence, who had also moved there in order to escape their stepfather. The uncle worked for the Southern Railway, and secured Sanders a job there as a blacksmith's helper in the workshops. After two months, Sanders moved to Jasper, Alabama, where he got a job cleaning out the ash pans of locomotives from the Northern Alabama Railroad (a division of the Southern Railway) when they had finished their runs.
Sanders progressed to become a fireman (steam engine stoker) from the age of 16. He worked the job for nearly three years until he was fired for "insubordination" after he got sick.
Sanders found laboring work with the Norfolk and Western Railway from 1909. While working on the railroad, he met Josephine King of Jasper, Alabama, and they were married shortly afterwards on June 15, 1909, in Jasper. They would go on to have three children, Margaret Josephine Sanders, born March 29, 1910, in Jasper, Alabama, and died October 19, 2001, in West Palm Beach, Florida, Harland David Sanders Jr. on April 23, 1912, in Tuscumbia, Alabama, who died on September 15, 1932, in Martinsville, Indiana, from infected tonsils, and Mildred Marie Sanders Ruggles, born October 15, 1919, in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and died September 21, 2010, in Lexington, Kentucky. He then found work as a fireman on the Illinois Central Railroad, and he and his family moved to Jackson, Tennessee. By night, Sanders studied law by correspondence through the La Salle Extension University. Sanders lost his job at Illinois after brawling with a colleague. While Sanders moved to work for the Rock Island Railroad, Josephine and the children went to live with her parents.
After a while, Sanders began to practice law in Little Rock, which he did for three years, earning enough in fees for his family to move with him. His legal career ended after a courtroom brawl with his own client destroyed his reputation. This period represented a low point for Sanders. As his biographer John Ed Pearce wrote, "[Sanders] had encountered repeated failure largely through bullheadedness, a lack of self-control, impatience, and a self-righteous lack of diplomacy."
Following the incident, Sanders was forced to move back in with his mother in Henryville, where he went to work as a laborer on the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1916, the family moved to Jeffersonville, where Sanders got a job selling life insurance for the Prudential Life Insurance Company. Sanders was eventually fired for insubordination. He moved to Louisville and got a sales job with Mutual Benefit Life of New Jersey.
In 1920, at age 30, Sanders established a ferry boat company, which operated a boat on the Ohio River between Jeffersonville and Louisville. He canvassed for funding, becoming a minority shareholder himself, and was appointed secretary of the company. The ferry was an instant success. Around 1922 he took a job as secretary at the Chamber of Commerce in Columbus, Indiana. He admitted that he was not very good at the job and resigned after less than a year. Sanders cashed in his ferry boat company shares for $22,000 ($393,000 today) and used the money to establish a company manufacturing acetylene lamps. The venture failed after Delco introduced an electric lamp that it sold on credit.
Sanders moved to Winchester, Kentucky, to work as a salesman for the Michelin Tire Company. He lost his job in 1924 when Michelin closed its New Jersey manufacturing plant. In 1924, by chance, he met the general manager of Standard Oil of Kentucky, who asked him to run a service station in Nicholasville. In 1930, the station closed as a result of the Great Depression.
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1952–1980: Kentucky Fried Chicken
In 1952, Sanders franchised his secret recipe "Kentucky Fried Chicken" for the first time, to Pete Harman of South Salt Lake, Utah, the operator of one of that city's largest restaurants. In the first year of selling the product, restaurant sales more than tripled, with 75% of the increase coming from sales of fried chicken. For Harman, the addition of fried chicken was a way of differentiating his restaurant from competitors; in Utah, a product hailing from Kentucky was unique and evoked imagery of Southern hospitality. Don Anderson, a sign painter hired by Harman, coined the name Kentucky Fried Chicken. After Harman's success, several other restaurant owners franchised the concept and paid Sanders $0.04 per chicken (equivalent to $0.46 in 2023).
Sanders believed that his North Corbin restaurant would remain successful indefinitely; however, he sold it at age 65 after the new Interstate 75 reduced customer traffic. Left only with his savings and US$105 a month from Social Security (equivalent to $1,194 in 2023), Sanders decided to begin to franchise his chicken concept in earnest, and traveled the US looking for suitable restaurants. After closing the North Corbin site, Sanders and Claudia opened a new restaurant and company headquarters in Shelbyville in 1959. Often sleeping in the back of his car, Sanders visited restaurants, offered to cook his chicken, and if workers liked it negotiated franchise rights.
Although such visits required much time, eventually potential franchisees began visiting Sanders instead. He ran the company while Claudia mixed and shipped the spices to restaurants. The franchise approach became highly successful; KFC was one of the first fast food chains to expand internationally, opening outlets in Canada and later in the UK, Australia, Mexico and Jamaica by the mid-1960s. Sanders obtained a patent protecting his method of pressure frying chicken in 1962, and trademarked the phrase "It's Finger Lickin' Good" in 1963.
The company's rapid expansion to more than 600 locations became overwhelming for the aging Sanders. In 1964, then 73 years old, he sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation for $2 million ($19.6 million today) to a partnership of Kentucky businessmen headed by John Y. Brown Jr., a 29-year-old lawyer and future governor of Kentucky, and Jack C. Massey, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Sanders became a salaried brand ambassador. The initial deal did not include the Canadian operations, which Sanders retained, nor the franchising rights in the UK, Florida, Utah, and Montana, which Sanders had already sold to others.
In 1965, Sanders moved to Mississauga, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, to oversee his Canadian franchises and continued to collect franchise and appearance fees both in Canada and in the US. Sanders bought and lived in a bungalow at 1337 Melton Drive in the Lakeview area of Mississauga from 1965 until his death in 1980. In September 1970 he and his wife were baptized in the Jordan River. He also befriended Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell.
Sanders remained the company's symbol after selling it, traveling 200,000 miles (320,000 km) a year on the company's behalf and filming many TV commercials and appearances. He retained much influence over executives and franchisees, who respected his culinary expertise and feared what The New Yorker described as "the force and variety of his swearing" when a restaurant or the company varied from what executives described as "the Colonel's chicken". One change the company made was to the gravy, which Sanders had bragged was so good that "it'll make you throw away the durn chicken and just eat the gravy" but which the company simplified to reduce time and cost. As late as 1979 Sanders made surprise visits to KFC restaurants, and if the food disappointed him, he denounced it to the franchisee as "God-damned slop" or pushed it onto the floor. In 1973, Sanders sued Heublein Inc.—the then parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken—over the alleged misuse of his image in promoting products he had not helped develop. In 1975, Heublein Inc. unsuccessfully sued Sanders for libel after he publicly described their gravy as being "sludge" with a "wall-paper taste".
Death
Sanders was diagnosed with acute leukemia in June 1980. He died at Jewish Hospital in Louisville of pneumonia six months later, on December 16, at the age of 90. Sanders had remained active until the month before his death, appearing in his white suit to crowds. His body was laid in state in the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort after a funeral service at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Chapel, which was attended by more than 500 people. His body was also displayed in an open casket during a memorial service that was held at KFC's headquarters in Louisville; about 1,000 to 1,200 people attended the service. Sanders was buried in his characteristic white suit and black western string tie in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.
His wife, Claudia, died on December 31, 1996, at the age of 94.
By the time of Sanders's death, there were an estimated 6,000 KFC outlets in 48 countries worldwide, with $2 billion in sales annually.
If you want to read a lot more, go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders
- MAKES
- 8
- COOK TIME
- 15 Min
German potato pancakes are a favorite side dish in the fall, especially during Oktoberfest. Now, we've made them even more fall-perfect by adding some apple to them. Our Apple Potato Pancakes are crispy-delicious with just a touch of sweetness!
- 3 baking potatoes, peeled and grated
- 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and grated
- 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- Place potatoes, apple, and onion in a strainer. Press down with the back of a large spoon to extract excess moisture. (If they're still watery, wrap them in a clean dish towel and squeeze to extract moisture.)
- In a large bowl, combine potatoes, apple, onion, and egg; mix well. Gradually add flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt; mix well.
- In a large skillet over medium heat, heat oil. Using about 1/3 cup of batter per pancake, form into pancake shape and place in oil.
- Fry in batches 3 to 4 minutes per side, or until golden and cooked through. Drain on paper towels; serve hot.
- 1960 – Swanson added desserts to a new four-compartment tray.
- 1964 – Night Hawk name originated from the Night Hawk steak houses that operated in Austin, Texas from 1939 through 1994. The original diners were open all night catering to the late-night crowd. The restaurants produced the first frozen Night Hawk TV dinner in 1964.
- 1969 – The first TV breakfasts were marketed. Great Starts Breakfasts and breakfast sandwiches followed later.
- 1973 – The first Swanson Hungry-Man dinners were marketed; these were larger portions of its regular dinner products.
- 1986 – The first microwave oven-safe trays were marketed.
- 1986 – The Smithsonian Institute inducted the original Swanson TV Dinner tray into the Museum of American History.
