KFC owner Success Story In English

This is Colonel Sanders' crazy real-life story. Creating the juggernaut that is KFC  wasn't the only fascinating thing he  did. Here’s the man behind the 11 herbs  and spices and that iconic white suit.According to a profile in The New Yorker  from 1970, Harland Sanders had a hard go of  it from a young age following his birth outside  Henryville, Indiana, in 1890. He was raised by  an ultra-religious mother who taught him that  alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and playing cards were all equally poisonous. After his mother got  married to a man who wasn't so keen on the idea of stepchildren, so starting at the age of 12, Sanders had to go make his own way in the world.He worked on a farm while going to  school, and when that got too hard,  

he quit school just two weeks into seventh  grade. Over the next three decades of his life,  

he worked as a streetcar conductor and railroad  fireman, studied law by mail, acted as a midwife,operated a steamboat ferry, and even more mostly failing at all these things.

In the meantime, Sanders got married at  age 18 and had three children. As Sanders'  

autobiography recounts, after Sanders got fired  from the railroad, his wife left and went to  

her parents in Alabama. Sanders planned and  failed to kidnap his own children, and instead reluctantly reconciled with his wife. The couple  would eventually divorce, nearly 40 years later.

KFC Success Story In English

Harland Sanders' life would change at age 40 when  he began selling food to travelers from the back room of the Shell gas station he ran in  Corbin, Kentucky. As History points out, he became a hit with travelers selling  his simple country fare of country ham, okra, biscuits, string beans, and  similar items, as an alternative to the typical diner food found along the  highways. Ironically, fried chicken was not originally on the menu. It took too long  to prepare to be able to keep up with demand.

Sanders would advertise the food at his Shell  station by painting giant signs on barns in the  area. This clever marketing scheme greatly upset  Matt Stewart, the operator of a nearby competing Standard Oil station. Stewart began painting over  Sanders' signs, so Sanders went to pay him a visit along with two Shell district managers. What they  weren't expecting was that Stewart had a gun, with which he shot and killed one of the managers.  Sanders had his own gun and returned fire, wounding Stewart in the shoulder. Stewart went to prison for murder, and charges against Sanders were dropped,  leaving him the gas station king of Kentucky. If you know one thing about Colonel Sanders,  it's probably that he made chicken. But if you know a second thing, well, it's that he's  a colonel. 

KFC Success Story

Heck, you might even think "Colonel" is his first name. Certainly more people could  name "Colonel Sanders" than "Harland Sanders." But while it's true that Harland  Sanders did serve in the Army, he wasn't that kind of colonel. As  History relates, he lied about his age to join the Army in 1906 at age 15 or 16. He served in Cuba for about six months, before he was honorably discharged, possibly  because his young age was discovered. Suffice it to say, this was not enough time  for him to ascend to the rank of colonel. So what gives? In fact, Harland  Sanders was a Kentucky Colonel, which is the highest honorary title bestowed  by the governor of Kentucky – a distinction later held by Muhammed Ali and Bob Barker.  Sanders was declared a colonel by Governor Ruby Laffoon in 1935 and then got re-upped in  1949 because his chicken was just that good.

  

Not one to miss a marketing opportunity,  Colonel Sanders made it a whole thing. “It’s the only way you’re gonna get  chicken that’s finger-lickin’ good.” Fried chicken wasn’t on Colonel Sanders’ early  menu, because 30 minutes was too long to wait for a serving to cook. Then in 1939, Sanders  had probably the most important breakthrough in chicken history. He began frying his chicken  in a pressure cooker, which dramatically cut the cook time while preserving quality. What’s  more, by this time Sanders was refining his famous blend of 11 herbs and spices, and the  combination was ready for explosive success.

And just in time, too. In 1935, Sanders'  first post-gas station cafe had been named  

a must-see destination in Duncan Hines’ travel  guide, Adventures in Good Eating. Like Sanders, it’s interesting to note, Duncan Hines  was a real guy, unlike Betty Crocker.

Sanders was now nationally famous and had  expanded his back-room-in-a-gas-station  

kitchen into a 142-seat restaurant.  It seemed like, finally, at age 49, after a host of weird jobs and shoot-outs,  Sanders had found success. As it turns out, he hadn't seen anything yet. But first  he had to deal with some bad news. In the early 1950s, Colonel Sanders suffered a  couple of career setbacks. As explained by The New Yorker, the highway junction that ran in front  of his cafe was moved, and then a new interstate highway was built that took traffic away from  his location entirely. 

KFC Founder Success Story

After a decade of success, it looked like Sanders was done for. In 1956, he  auctioned off his business at a huge loss and was now, at age 65, living entirely on his savings  and a Social Security check of $105 a month. Fortunately, franchising would be his saving  grace. According to History, Sanders taught his chicken-frying methods to friend Pete Harman  in Salt Lake City. As it happens, Harman owned one of the largest restaurants in town, and he  started selling Sanders' chicken as his first-ever franchisee, calling it "Kentucky Fried Chicken"  and selling it in the soon-to-be trademark bucket. Following Harman's success, other  businesses wanted to sell Sanders' chicken and made arrangements to give him 4 cents  for every chicken cooked via his process. Sanders hopped in his 1946 Ford and drove around  the country, sleeping in his car with pressure cookers and a bag of spices, looking far and wide  for franchisees and finding them everywhere.

 

By 1963, Sanders had over 600 restaurants in the  United States and Canada selling his chicken. Pete Harman would be an extremely important  contributor to Colonel Sanders' increasing success. According to Smithsonian Magazine, in  addition to coming up with the name "Kentucky Fried Chicken", being Sanders' first  franchisee, and selling via bucket,  

the phrase "finger-lickin' good" and the  idea of standalone KFC restaurants came  

courtesy of Harman. Harman alone would own more  than 300 KFC franchises in Utah, California,Nevada, and Washington. But despite being  basically the co-founder of the franchise, it's not his face on the bucket. That's okay,  though. The Colonel made him a millionaire. “Whooooooo-we!” The Colonel himself became a millionaire in  1964 at age 73, when he sold Kentucky Fried Chicken to a group of investors for $2 million.  

Success Story Of  KFC In Short

The New Yorker says he was reluctant at first, but the investors persuaded him by saying they  would never tamper with his recipe and that he could stay with the company as an adviser and  brand ambassador, the living face of the company. The new owners felt having a living,  authentic company symbol was a great asset. And they were right. Soon the Colonel was making  appearances on The Tonight Show and Merv Griffin, as well as a seemingly endless number of  television commercials and other advertisements, with KFC spending $24 million on advertising  in 1970, compared to half a million in 1964. A big part of the Colonel's success as an  advertising icon was his trademark look. As History explains, after his second  commission as a Kentucky Colonel in 1949, he decided to really lean into the whole "Southern  gentleman" thing. 

Sanders grew out his facial hair and started wearing a string tie. At first he  wore a black frock coat but soon switched to his iconic all-white suit after realizing it  hid flour stains much better. Additionally, he started bleaching his mustache and goatee  so they'd match his naturally white hair As Colonel Sanders biographer  Josh Ozersky wrote for Time, Sanders actually called himself "Colonel"  and had others do the same. He wore his white suit every day and, indeed, it  was the only thing he wore in public for the last 20 years of his life, and not  just for advertisements or TV appearances. He had a light cotton version he wore in summer  and a heavy wool version he wore in the winter. The suit has become so iconic that suits  actually owned and worn by the Colonel can sell at auction for up to $80,000.  Furthermore, the suit and facial hair are enough to make actors as diverse  as Darrell Hammond, Norm MacDonald, Jim Gaffigan, George Hamilton, Rob Riggle,  and Billy Zane recognizable as the Colonel.

KFC man Success Story

Colonel Sanders remained the symbol of the  company and traveled 200,000 miles a year  

making appearances on television  and at the company's franchises. “Colonel Sanders! What are you doing in  Chicago?” “Oh, I’m just here for a short while." Even so, Sanders came to hate the changes the  company made after he was no longer in charge. The New Yorker reported Sanders dreamed of gravy  so good, quote, "it'll make you throw away the durn chicken and just eat the gravy." However,  the gravy made by post-Sanders franchisees was  

decidedly not the Colonel's gravy. A  company executive was quoted as saying: "Let's face it, the Colonel's gravy was fantastic,  but you had to be a Rhodes Scholar to cook it."

Which was probably code for "too expensive."

The Colonel didn't care for such  changes to his recipes and wasn't shy about letting people know it, despite his job  as brand ambassador. He would visit franchises, and if the gravy wasn't up to his standards, he  would throw the food on the floor and call it, quote, "god-damned slop." Worse, in an interview  in The Louisville Courier-Journal, he referred to the gravy as "pure wallpaper paste" made with  tap water, flour, and starch to which they add,  

quote, "some sludge". He further said  that the then-new crispy recipe was:"...nothing in the world but a damn  fried doughball stuck on some chicken." His criticism of KFC was so harsh that the company  he founded sued him for libel in 1978. The case was thrown out, but if you think that's the end  of the story, don't worry it happened again. Suffice it to say that Colonel Sanders was not  happy with the changes made to his chicken and gravy recipes in the name of savings and  streamlining for thousands of franchises. Can you imagine the glorious explosion  of rage that would cover this land if the Colonel were to appear today  and see a Go Cup or a Double Down? In the 1970s, however, when Sanders was now in  his 80s, his solution was somewhat different. He and his once-mistress-now-wife Claudia  opened a new competing restaurant that served food that rose to the Colonel's standards. As  reported in People magazine, the restaurant, known as “Claudia Sanders, The  Colonel's Lady Dinner House”, would sell sit-down-style dinners of  ham and lobster in addition to chicken.Sanders attempted to expand this business into  a chain as well, but KFC wasn't thrilled about that and sued them to the tune of $120 million.  

KFC Success Story Hindi

According to Uproxx, the suit was settled for $1 million and Sanders sold the restaurant. The  Claudia Sanders Dinner House still exists, though, and you can visit it, right off I-64 east  of Louisville. It is the only non-KFC restaurant that sells a fully authorized version of the  original Colonel Sanders fried chicken recipe. Sanders died in 1980 at age 90 of acute leukemia.  

He kept working until a month before his death.  Flags were flown at half-staff for his funeral, which was attended by over 1,000 people. That  seems like it should be the end of his story, outside debates about the propriety of his image  being used in continued advertising after his death, but for some Japanese baseball fans,  the Colonel's death was only the beginning. Here's the short version of the  story, as reported by NBC News.  

Osaka's baseball team, the Hanshin Tigers,  won the national championship in 1985.  

Tigers fans often jump in Osaka's Dotonbori  River to celebrate wins. After the championship, some rowdy fans decided that a statue of  Colonel Sanders outside a local KFC looked enough like the Tigers' American first baseman  Randy Bass that he should go in the river too.  So they threw the statue in the river. Since  that time, fans feel the team has been plagued by "the curse of the Colonel," which is to say,  the Tigers have not won another championship. The statue was recovered from the river in 2009, but it had deteriorated pretty significantly  in 24 years. The Colonel was missing his legs, hands, and glasses when pulled from the murky  waters of the Dotonburi. The legs and right hand were recovered the next day, but the left  hand and glasses are still missing. Tigers fans assert it is because of these still-missing  pieces that the curse is still in place.