The Food That Built America Recap for The Colonel
-This week’s episode of The Food That Built America tells the story of KFC and how it came to be one of the best chicken places of all time.
-In the 1930s, the United States is dealing with the Great Depression. A man named Harland Sanders is working in a gas station and trying to keep things afloat. To make ends meet, he cooks his favorite chicken recipe from when he was a child. He learned it at five years old after his father died and his mother worked to keep the family together.
-Harland decides to sell the chicken at the gas station. It was considered to be a delicacy at the time, so people were enticed by it…and his secret recipe.
-Another gas station gets wind of this and tries to get people to stop going to Harland’s…..even going as far as painting over his sign. This rivalry gets violent and ends up causing a gunfight. One of Harland’s workers ends up getting killed. Harland shot the gunman, who was wounded. In the end, the one who killed Harland’s coworker ended up going to prison for murder.
-Harland’s gas station starts making a profit due to the chicken, but it is so popular that he must find a faster way to cook. He uses a pressure cooker with oil, which made the chicken, but also posed a danger for the workers. Harland found a way to make a cover to prevent this from happening while still getting the chicken cooked properly.
-The chicken sales do so well that Harland opens a restaurant. It is written up in Duncan Hines Travel Guide, which is a huge honor at the time.
-By 1935m things are doing so well that Kentucky gives him the title of Colonel from the governor, which leads to Colonel Sanders being born and becoming the face of the company.
-Harland’s main goal was to keep the recipe a secret, so he wrote it down and hid it in a door jam in his house. He only told his daughter about it.
-Harland has Pete Harman try the chicken. He calls it finger licking good, which becomes the catchphrase for the company. Pete also wants them to go into business together, which will ultimately change things in the fast-food business forever.
-After Dwight David Eisenhower signs an interstate highway act, things take a turn for the worse for the company. However, Pete saves the day by giving him the money for the chicken sales from his restaurant. He even calls it Colonel Sanders’s Kentucky Fried Chicken.
-The chicken is a huge hit and sold in buckets to keep it fresh. Harland tries to get the chicken in other places by providing pre-mixed chicken batter. He also franchises it across the country, including one in Indiana called Hoppy House. This is where colonelling began–where he would show up to restaurants dressed in his Colonel uniform to show them how it was done.
-One of the men who worked with him? None other than Dave Thomas, the man behind Wendy’s! Before he would bring us the Baconator, Harland would take Dave under his wing and teach him about the business. Dave would also help design the bucket with the Colonel’s picture and the red and white logo and began a marketing plan to put KFC on the map.
-Colonel Sanders would end up on What’s My Line which gave him and the chicken national recognition.
-By 1964, the business is doing so well that Harland meets with John Y Brown, who would buy Kentucky Fried Chicken and make it into a brick-and-mortar business….on the condition that the recipe would never be changed.
-John begins to launch new franchises with his partner and help convert old restaurants into new KFC restaurants. They made sure each one looked the same in terms of uniform, look and menu.
-Colonel was showing up on various television shows and was becoming an American icon. He is also making commercials to promote the business, which gives KFC even more business.
-In 1966, Harland was buying and selling KFC shares, making them bigger than McDonald’s. By 1971, there were hundreds of restaurants throughout the country.
-At this point, John and his partner sell the company to Heublein, a food and alcohol conglomerate, but Harland is not a part of it, nor would he get any money from it. He was very upset about this but could not get out of his contract. He was even angrier when he discovered that they changed his chicken recipe.
-A VERY angry Harland calls Dave, but he is in no position to help, since he was in the process of opening Wendy’s.
-Harland goes to the media to speak out against the change in his recipe and sued the company for misuse of his brand. He also opened his own restaurant.
-Heublein offers Harland a deal to fix things, but Harland wants things back to the way they were in terms of making the chicken. They come to a million-dollar deal and his recipe is kept intact.
-In 1980, Harland dies of pneumonia, but remains a legend to this day, thanks to his restaurants, food and likeness.
-More next week, stay tuned.
