KFC

• 1. A Signed Recipe

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  KFC keeps a copy of its founding recipe, signed by Colonel Harland Sanders, in a safe inside a vault at its headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. Alongside it sit 11 vials holding the herbs and spices themselves. The company behind that vault operates more than 31,980 locations in 150 countries. Measured by sales, only McDonald's is bigger. Yet it all began with one man selling fried chicken from a roadside restaurant during the Great Depression. This documentary asks how a small-town Kentucky cook turned his chicken into a worldwide name. It asks why the man himself sold the business, and what a pressure cooker and a cardboard bucket had to do with its rise. And it asks what happens when a brand this large keeps stumbling in public.

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• 2. A Filling Station Kitchen

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  Harland Sanders was born in 1890 on a farm outside Henryville, Indiana. When he was five years old, his father died. His mother went to work at a canning plant, and Sanders, the eldest son, was left to look after his two younger siblings. After he turned seven, she taught him to cook. At 13 he left home and drifted through a series of jobs with mixed success.

  In 1930, Sanders took over a Shell filling station on U.S. Route 25, just outside North Corbin, Kentucky. The town sat on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains. There he served travelers the dishes he had learned as a child, including fried chicken, steaks and country ham.

  For four years he fed customers from his own dining room table. He then bought the larger filling station across the road and set up six tables. By 1936 the business had done well enough that Governor Ruby Laffoon gave him the honorary title of Kentucky Colonel. In 1937 he expanded the restaurant to 142 seats, bought a motel across the street, and named the operation Sanders Court & Café.

  Cooking a single order of chicken in an iron frying pan took 35 minutes, and Sanders hated the wait. He refused to deep fry, because he believed it lowered the quality of the chicken. Cooking ahead of orders saved time but sometimes left wasted food at the end of the day.

  In 1939, the first commercial pressure cookers reached the market, mostly built for steaming vegetables. Sanders bought one and modified it into a pressure fryer. In his opinion, it cut the cooking time to about that of deep frying while keeping the quality of pan-fried chicken. That modified pot was the ancestor of the pressure fryers that franchisees would still be arguing about in the 1960s.

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• 3. Franchise Roadshow

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  Governor Lawrence Wetherby recommissioned Sanders as a Kentucky Colonel in 1950, and Sanders took the honor seriously. He grew a goatee, put on a black frock coat, later swapped for a white suit, and added a string tie. He began to refer to himself as "the Colonel". His associates went along with it, "jokingly at first and then in earnest", according to biographer Josh Ozersky.

  In 1952, Sanders licensed his recipe to his friend Pete Harman, who ran one of the largest restaurants in South Salt Lake, Utah. That arrangement became the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

  Interstate 75 forced Sanders onto the road. His restaurant mostly served travelers, and when the route planned in 1955 bypassed his properties, he sold them. He then traveled the country pitching his recipe to restaurant owners. Independent restaurants paid four cents, later five, on each chicken. In return they received the recipe, the right to list it on their menus, and permission to use his name and likeness in promotion.

  A sign painter named Don Anderson, hired by Harman, came up with the name Kentucky Fried Chicken. Harman wanted something to set his restaurant apart from its competitors. A product from Kentucky sounded exotic and suggested Southern hospitality.

  In 1957, Harman introduced the bucket meal: 14 pieces of chicken, five bread rolls and a pint of gravy in a cardboard bucket. Serving the signature meal in a paper bucket became an iconic feature of the company. By 1963 there were 600 KFC restaurants, the largest fast food operation in the United States. Chicken was now challenging the hamburger's dominance of the market. The pace of that growth was about to overwhelm the founder who started it.

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• 4. Corporate Hands

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  In 1964, Sanders sold the company for US$2 million, around US$17 million in 2020 money, to a group of investors led by John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack C. Massey. His contract guaranteed him a lifetime salary. He also agreed to serve as the company's quality controller and its trademark.

  By 1970 the chain had 3,000 outlets in 48 countries. In July 1971, Brown sold the company to Heublein, a Connecticut-based packaged food and drinks corporation, for US$285 million. That is around US$1.8 billion in 2020 money. The decades that followed brought mixed fortunes in the United States, as a series of owners with little or no restaurant experience took their turns.

  Sanders died in 1980. By then there were an estimated 6,000 KFC outlets in 48 countries, with US$2 billion in annual sales.

  R. J. Reynolds, the tobacco giant, acquired Heublein in 1982. In July 1986, Reynolds announced the sale of KFC to PepsiCo for US$850 million. The sale actually took place in early October, for US$840 million. PepsiCo made the chain part of its restaurants division, alongside Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

  In August 1997, PepsiCo spun off that division as a public company valued at US$4.5 billion. It was named Tricon Global Restaurants, and it held 30,000 outlets with annual sales of US$10 billion. Tricon renamed itself Yum! Brands in May 2002.

  Today KFC is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, and it reported sales of US$23 billion in 2013. Its headquarters at 1441 Gardiner Lane is a three-story colonial-style building nicknamed the "White House" for its resemblance to the US president's home. It houses the executive offices and the company's research and development facilities. Yum! Brands plans to move the KFC headquarters to Plano, Texas, in 2025.

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• 5. Across Borders

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  The first British KFC opened on the 1st of May 1965 at 92 Fishergate in Preston, Lancashire, and it still operates today. The company had decided in 1964 to sell franchises beyond the Atlantic, and the United Kingdom was its entry point into Europe. By the mid-1960s KFC also had outlets in Canada, Mexico and Jamaica, which made it one of the first American fast-food chains to go abroad.

  Pat Grace met Sanders at his holiday home near Toronto, Canada, and agreed to franchise the brand in Ireland. In 1970, Grace returned from Canada and opened his first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in the Phibsboro shopping center in Dublin. He eventually opened six more, across Dublin, Limerick and Cork.

  In the early 1980s, disagreements over cost cutting with KFC management led Grace to rename his restaurants Pat Grace's Famous Fried Chicken. They reportedly kept the original recipe. The restaurants closed in the late 1980s, and Grace went on to wholesale the spice blend as Grace's Perfect Blend.

  In November 1987, KFC opened an outlet in Beijing and became the first Western restaurant chain in China. China has since become the company's single largest market.

  Over 300 menu items exist worldwide, because KFC adapts its offering to local tastes. In predominantly Islamic countries the chicken is halal. In Asia, where spicy food is popular, the Zinger chicken burger is a staple. Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka sell a grilled chicken called Smoky Red. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Vietnam offer a roasted option called Flava Crava.

  In China, the menu includes rice bowls, noodle dishes and chicken prepared in the style of Peking duck. Peru sells the locally popular Inca Kola, along with tres leches cake. Greece and Bulgaria serve potato wedges instead of French fries. A number of Eastern European locations and Portugal offer beer alongside soft drinks.

  The PepsiCo years left their mark on the drinks list, and most territories still supply PepsiCo products. Exceptions that stock Coca-Cola drinks include Barbados, Greece, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Romania, South Africa and Turkey. In 2023, branches in the UK and Ireland introduced signature fries coated in herbs and spice, hoping to improve the taste of the fries.

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• 6. Inside The Kitchen

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  In July 1940, Sanders finalized what became known as his Original Recipe of 11 herbs and spices. He never revealed it publicly. He did say that the ingredients included salt and pepper, and that the rest "stand on everybody's shelf".

  The recipe has never been patented. Patent law requires public disclosure and protects an invention only for a strictly limited term. A trade secret, by contrast, can stay with its holder in perpetuity.

  To protect the secret, Griffith Laboratories produces half of the blend before it passes to McCormick, which adds the second half. McCormick is also KFC's largest supplier of sauces, seasonings and marinades, and a long-term partner in new product development.

  In 1999, a couple who bought the house once occupied by Sanders found scribbled notes said to be the secret recipe. KFC at first wanted to sue to stop an auction of the notes. By early 2001 it had dropped the lawsuit, saying the notes were "nowhere close" to the original.

  Joe Ledington of Kentucky, a nephew by marriage of Sanders, claimed to have found a handwritten recipe in an envelope in a scrapbook. In August 2016, staffers at the Chicago Tribune tested it. After a few attempts, and with the addition of the flavor enhancer Ac'cent, they claimed to have produced chicken "indistinguishable" from what they bought at KFC.

  At each outlet, the chicken is hand-breaded in wheat flour mixed with seasoning, a process of two to four minutes. It is then pressure fried for seven to 10 minutes, depending on the country, in oil at 185 degrees Celsius. After frying it stands for five minutes before going into a warming oven. Policy is to discard chicken that has not sold within 90 minutes.

  The frying oil varies by region and can be sunflower, soybean, rapeseed or palm. A KFC executive said the taste changes with the oil and with whether the chickens were corn-fed or wheat-fed. Territories that follow Sanders' system, such as Canada and the UK, cut each chicken into nine pieces. The United States now uses an eight-piece cut.

  The cookers themselves have a story. The company first used stove-top covered pots. In the 1960s, the officially recommended model was the L S Hartzog "KFC 20-Head Cooker", a large device that cost $16,000. It had no oil filtration, so filtering was done by hand. The pressure fryers occasionally exploded, often harming employees.

  In 1969, inventor and engineer Winston L. Shelton developed the Collectramatic. It had precision time and temperature controls and filtered its own oil, all while meeting Sanders' high standards. Fred Jeffries, then vice president of purchasing, said: "There's no way it (KFC) could have grown as it did without the Collectramatic." He recalled that stores averaged about $200,000 a year with the pots, but reached $900,000 a year thanks to Shelton's fryer.

  John Y. Brown Jr. saw it differently. He quietly allowed franchisees to use only the older Hartzog fryer, and he warned that using the Collectramatic breached their contracts. His worry was that the new machines might break down in the middle of business, whereas the old pots were dangerous but known to work.

  Brown held his ground until he learned that his father, John Y. Brown Sr., owned several KFC franchises and used the Collectramatic in every one, successfully. After the company's next sale, its new owner acquired Hartzog and nullified the contract. Sanders had backed the Collectramatic from 1970, and it has been an approved fryer since 1972.

  From 2013, KFC began moving to pressure fryers made by Henny Penny. Its Velocity series offers a larger load capacity, automatic oil filtration and longer oil life.

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• 7. Brand And Image

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  The first KFC logo arrived in 1952, pairing a Kentucky Fried Chicken typeface with a picture of the Colonel. Early slogans included "North America's Hospitality Dish", used from 1956, and "We fix Sunday dinner seven nights a week". Pete Harman trademarked the phrase "It's finger lickin' good", which became the company slogan and was used from 1956. It went on to be one of the best-known slogans of the 20th century, though the US trademark expired in 2006.

  In 1962, Dave Thomas took Colonel Sanders' bucket and turned it into a sign that revolved in front of almost every American KFC outlet.

  After the sale by Sanders, the company began advertising on US television in 1966 with a budget of US$4 million. To pay for nationwide campaigns, it set up the Kentucky Fried Chicken Advertising Co-Op, in which franchisees held 10 votes and the company three. In 1969 KFC hired its first national advertising agency, Leo Burnett. A notable 1972 campaign featured the jingle "Get a bucket of chicken, have a barrel of fun", performed by Barry Manilow. By 1976, KFC was one of the largest advertisers in the United States.

  Sanders himself starred in the company's advertising until the end of his life. Afterward he remained a key icon, described as an "international symbol of hospitality".

  In 1991, the KFC name was officially adopted, although the initials were already widely used. Kyle Craig, president of KFC U.S., admitted the change was an attempt to distance the chain from the unhealthy connotations of "fried". The early 1990s also brought successful launches: spicy Hot Wings in 1990, popcorn chicken in 1992, and in 1993, the Zinger, a spicy chicken fillet sandwich sold internationally. By 1994, KFC had 5,149 outlets in the US, 9,407 overall, and over 100,000 employees.

  By 2015, KFC was struggling. It had lost business to other retailers, and three years earlier Chick-fil-A had passed it as the leading chicken retailer in the US. The company launched an initiative to revamp its packaging, decor and uniforms and to expand its menu.

  In May 2015, a new series of US advertisements began featuring Darrell Hammond as Colonel Sanders. In a planned rotation, Norm Macdonald, Jim Gaffigan, George Hamilton and Rob Riggle played Sanders in similar ads through the fall of 2016. In January 2018, country music icon Reba McEntire played the first female Colonel Sanders.

  Andrea Zahumensky, who left as CEO in 2021, told Ad Age that the "brand assets that we're so lucky to have" were the bucket, the three stripes and the full name Kentucky Fried Chicken. The chain was using all three more. Australia had already gone back to the full name Kentucky Fried Chicken in 2019.

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• 8. Trouble Spots

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  Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation, published in 2002, and Morgan Spurlock's 2004 film Super Size Me captured a growing unease about fast food. The concerns were its animal welfare record, its links to obesity and its environmental impact.

  Since 2003, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has protested KFC's choice of poultry suppliers around the world. The exception is KFC Canada, which signed an agreement to use only "animal-friendly" suppliers. Gregg Dedrick, president of the US division, said the group wrongly treated KFC as a poultry producer rather than a purchaser of chickens. In 2008, Yum! said it had a responsibility to influence how its suppliers treat animals.

  In 2006, Greenpeace accused KFC Europe of sourcing soya bean for chicken feed from Cargill, which had been accused of clearing large areas of the Amazon rainforest. In May 2012, Greenpeace also accused KFC of sourcing paper pulp for its packaging from Indonesian rainforest wood. Independent tests found some packaging contained more than 50 percent mixed tropical hardwood fiber from Asia Pulp & Paper. KFC replied that 60 percent of the paper products Yum! sources come from sustainable sources, and its suppliers were working toward 100 percent.

  In 2010, KFC Australia aired a 30-second promotion called "KFC's cricket survival guide". It showed a white cricket fan surrounded by black fans of the opposing team, who passes around his bucket of KFC. The ad found its way to social media in the United States, where The Guardian noted that fried chicken remains tied to old racist stereotypes. KFC Australia said the ad was misinterpreted and was a light-hearted reference to the West Indian cricket team. It added that it unequivocally condemns discrimination of any type.

  In December 2012, KFC was criticized in China after it emerged that a number of suppliers had used growth hormones and excessive antibiotics on poultry in ways that broke Chinese law. In February 2013, Yum! CEO David Novak admitted the scandal had been "longer lasting and more impactful than we ever imagined". Yum! earns almost half of its profits from China, largely through KFC. It expected same-store sales to fall 20 percent in the first quarter of 2013.

  In 2017, KFC was fined £950,000 after two workers in the UK were scalded by boiling hot gravy. Teesside Crown Court in Middlesbrough ordered fines of £800,000 and £150,000.

  In February 2018, logistics mismanagement by DHL, the new delivery partner of KFC UK, caused a chicken shortage. KFC's largest market in Europe had to close hundreds of restaurants for a time. The company took out British newspaper adverts showing its initials rearranged to read "FCK", followed by an apology, and the public received it well.

  In November 2021, Finland's first KFC opened at the Itis shopping center in Itäkeskus, Helsinki. A few days earlier, a man had pitched a tent outside and, on opening day, revealed himself as a vegan activist defending animal rights. Security carried him away. That October, news had also surfaced of a controversy over chicken sourced from Poland, where salmonella is a significant problem.

  After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, KFC faced pressure to halt operations in Russia, where it had over 1,000 outlets, more than any other Western fast food chain. Within a few years, all Russian KFC restaurants were rebranded as Rostic's.

  In early 2022, a promotional video with influencer Niko Omilana showed a chicken farm in the KFC supply chain, with birds in good condition. Animal rights activists entered the same farm months later and found "severe overcrowding" and "lame and dead birds". Paul Roger, a vet and founder member of AWSELVA, said the birds in the footage showed signs of stress. KFC's actions were branded misleading.

  On the 9th of November 2022, KFC Germany invited its audience to celebrate Kristallnacht with "Cheesy Chicken". An apology followed shortly after, blaming an "error in our system".

  In May 2024, an outlet in Malaysia was reported closed because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and attacks on two outlets in Baghdad, Iraq, were reported. In September 2024, KFC announced that it would not meet the Better Chicken Commitment, an animal welfare pledge made in 2019. It included adopting slower-growing breeds by 2026, but only 1 percent of KFC's chickens came from such breeds in 2024.

  In June 2025, KFC temporarily closed all 11 of its restaurants in Denmark and dismissed its franchise holder. A TV show broadcast on the 23rd of June had revealed that employees were systematically extending use-by dates on raw chicken. Questions from the reporter had already prompted the national food authority to raid all 11 restaurants at once. None got an all-clear, seven received strict warnings, and four faced punishments such as fines or instant closure.

  Inspectors found moldy residue in several restaurants and breading mix reused continuously instead of replaced every three hours. They also found a thawing procedure that allowed chicken to be served up to four days after defrosting began. They saw suspect messages between restaurant bosses and the franchise holder about deceiving inspectors.

  In September 2025, a Czech journalist reported that the same shelf-life tricks might be used in the Czech Republic, citing a former employee of the Jablonec nad Nisou branch. The State Agricultural and Food Inspection Authority later found similar practices at the Liberec outlet and ordered mass inspections of KFC restaurants nationwide. In November, its spokesperson revealed that staff at the Prague-Dejvice outlet had defrosted chicken in standing water, which raises microbiological risks.

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