Colonel Sanders started franchising fried chicken in his sixties, living on Social Security
Harland Sanders was 65 when a new interstate highway drained the traffic from his Kentucky roadside restaurant. Left with savings and a monthly Social Security cheque of $105, he took to the road selling his secret chicken recipe to other restaurants. Within a decade Kentucky Fried Chicken spanned continents.
Born near Henryville, Indiana, on September 9, 1890, he lost his father at five and, with his mother working in a cannery, cooked for his younger siblings by seven. He quit school at 12, reportedly driven out by algebra, and bounced between farm work, painting carriages and conducting streetcars. At 16 he lied about his age to join the army and served in Cuba. What followed was a long string of jobs: locomotive fireman, correspondence-school lawyer whose career ended after a courtroom scuffle with his own client, insurance salesman, ferry company founder, tyre salesman and service station operator.
In 1930 Shell offered him a filling station in North Corbin, Kentucky, and he began serving meals, first in his own living quarters. Kentucky's governor made him an honorary colonel in 1935, and food critic Duncan Hines listed the café in his travel guide in 1939. The next year Sanders settled his secret recipe, cooking chicken in a pressure fryer that worked faster than a skillet.
The first franchise went to Pete Harman in Utah in 1952, whose restaurant tripled its sales within a year. After selling up in North Corbin, Sanders drove across the country signing up restaurants while his second wife, Claudia, mixed and shipped the spices. KFC became one of the first fast food chains to go international, reaching Canada, Britain, Australia, Mexico and Jamaica by the mid-1960s.
In 1964, at 73, he sold the business for $2 million to investors led by John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack Massey, kept the Canadian operations and stayed on as its paid ambassador. In old age he grumbled loudly that cost-cutting had ruined the food, famously comparing the gravy to wallpaper paste. He died in 1980, but his white suit and goatee still front the brand.
Source: Colonel Sanders
