Today I went our dinner with my family to the famous Colonel Harland D Sanders franchise outlet KFC. During the dinner my dad told us the history of KFC which I found very inspiring especially to me as a student.
Here it goes . . . .
Colonel Harland Sanders has become a world-known figure by marketing his “finger lickin’ good” Kentucky Fried Chicken. His chicken is now served daily across the United States as well as in more than eighty other countries. It is one of the largest fast food corporations in the world.
The spectacled Colonel Sanders could easily be identified by his clean, crisp white suite, black string tie, and walking cane. A statue of this man can be seen as far away as on Nathan Road in Kowloon, Hong Kong, for one place.
What makes Colonel Sanders’ story so amazing, you might ask. One of the most amazing aspects of his life is the fact that when he reached the age of sixty-five years old, after running a restaurant for several years, Harland Sanders found himself penniless. He retired and received his first social security check which was for one hundred and five dollars. And that was just the beginning of his international fame and financial success story…
Harland Sanders was born in the month of September in the year of 1890. He was the oldest child in a family of five. His father toiled in the coal mines of Kentucky until his death, which came at a young age. Sanders had just reached the tender age of six years old when he had to take care of his younger brother and sister. With his father gone, that left the responsibilities of working and supoprting the family up to his mother. She began working in a shirt factory. Harland tended to things at home and learned to cook the meals by his mother’s teachings. She taught him how to cook many foods, including fried chicken.
Over the next several years, Harland Sanders worked at a variety of jobs. He started out as a farm hand, then moved on to be a streetcar conductor while he was still just a teenager. From there he was a fireman on the railroad and finally ended up running a service station. Once again, he used his cooking skills that were learned from his mother to provide meals for travelers who stopped at his service station. As his cooking became more famous, and his food business grew, he moved into an actual restaurant nearby. His specialty was, of course, fried chicken which was seasoned with his original blend of eleven herbs and spices.
A few years later, in the year of 1935, when Sanders was forty-five years old, then Governor Ruby Laffoon made him a Kentucky Colonel because of his delectable cooking skills.
Progress is not always for the good of everyone, and in the 1950’s, Colonel Harland Sanders got the news of the plans for a new highway which was going to be constructed. The highway could divert the majority of the traffic away from the town and, with the beginning of the highway, Colonel Sanders saw his successful business coming to an end. He closed the restaurant and retired to a social security check of $105 (one hundred and five dollars a month!). When he received his first month’s pension, he decided that he wasn’t going to sit in a rocking chair and wait for the government checks. So, he convinced others to invest in his delicious fried chicken recipe, and Kentucky Fried Chicken was born…….
Using his last $105 Social Security cheque he set up Kentucky Fried Chicken, his own chicken franchising business, travelling across the country from restaurant to restaurant cooking chicken for the owners and their employers. Following the owners’ approval of his special KFC recipe, Colonel Sanders entered upon a handshake agreement, which provided him with a nickel for every chicken the restaurant sold.
The first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant was introduced to Britain in 1965.
KFC now offers great tasting meals and snacks in over 30,000 restaurants around the world. Every day over 6.5 million people make KFC part of their lives. Laid head to claw, KFC chickens consumed worldwide would stretch 458,065 kilometres and would circle the earth at the equator 11 times.
This is KFC moto: Chicken is our business, but innovation and customer satisfaction are our passions.
Get more informations here: http://www.kfc.com/ and enjoy your “finger lickin’ good” chicken!
In summary here is the milestone of his achievements with a newborn franchisee business, after he closed his first business in 1950:
- By 1964, from that humble beginning, Colonel Harland Sanders had 600 franchise outlets for his chicken across the United States and Canada.
- Later that year Colonel Sanders sold his interest in the United States operations for $2 million.
- The 65-year-old gentleman had started a worldwide empire using his $105 social security cheque.
- Sadly, Colonel Harland Sanders passed away on December 16th, 1980 aged 90.
- KFC now stretches world wide with more than 9,000 stores in 86 countries serving the Colonel’s Original Recipe.
So the moral behind this story is ……
“We as human being who are still breathing, should have a never say die attitude, then you will succeed in whatever you are doing currently. Let’s move forward and let’s shake the world.”
