From Struggles and Failures to Building a Global Fried Chicken Empire

The man you see in the logo of the world’s most famous fast-food chain, KFC, is Colonel Harland Sanders. He spent his whole life doing hard work, but after the age of 65, something happened that completely changed his life. In this journey of success, he faced many challenges, and in the end, his own company, KFC Corporation, even filed a court case against him. Harland Sanders was born on September 9, 1893, on a small farm near Henryville, Indiana. The first big difficulty of his life came when he was only six years old, and that was the death of his father. Since he was the eldest among his siblings and his mother had to stay out of the house all day to earn money, Harland had to take the responsibility of raising his younger siblings at a very young age. By the age of just seven, he had already become skilled in cooking bread and vegetables.

But when it became very hard to manage expenses with his mother’s salary, Harland started working at the age of 10 on a farm, where he had to feed the animals. This was the first job of his life. But because he was so young, his heart was not in the work, and that is why he was removed from the job. When Harland turned 12, his mother got married again, and from there another difficulty began. Harland’s stepfather did not like having the children around him at all, which caused fights in the house again and again. Finally, the day came when Harland was separated from his mother, and he went to live with a relative along with his younger siblings. To take care of his brothers, Harland once again started working on a farm. Every morning at 6 o’clock, he would feed the animals, then get ready and go to school, and in the evening, he worked by peeling corn. At that time, Harland was only 13 years old, yet he was managing such a tough routine with so many responsibilities all alone.

But during this time, another problem came into his life. Since he was not able to study properly, he was expelled from school. In an interview, Colonel Harland once said that actually, he could not understand algebra. For the next two years, Harland continued working on the farm. But because it had become very difficult to meet the expenses, he decided to join the U.S. Army. At that time, he was only 16 years old, while the minimum required age was higher. Harland lied about his age in the papers and joined the Army as a soldier. After many years of struggle, he finally got a little peace, but another problem soon arrived. After just one year in the Army, when his real age was discovered, he was dismissed from the Army too.

When Harland came out of the Army, he was 17 years old, and the next many years of his life were full of sadness and problems. During this time, he also got married, but he could not keep any job for long. Sometimes he worked as a streetcar conductor, sometimes as a fireman in the railway. Sometimes he became an insurance salesman, sometimes a lawyer, sometimes a steamboat operator, and even worked selling tires. Sometimes he left the jobs himself, and sometimes he was fired. Finally, one day, even his wife Josephine left him because she was tired of Harland’s unstable career. At the age of 34, in 1924, Harland met the General Manager of Kentucky Oil Company. He offered Harland the chance to run a gas station. Because of his tough situation, Harland accepted this offer.

In the beginning, the sales of the gas station were very low, but then Harland started treating his customers with great care. Because of this extra attention, the sales of the gas station tripled in no time, and once again happiness returned to Harland’s life. But just as the good days had begun, fate turned against him again. Yes! The whole world, including America, was hit by the Great Economic Depression. Because of this, the sales at Harland’s gas station fell so low that it became very hard for him to survive. The Kentucky Oil Company took the gas station back from Harland, and once again, he was left empty-handed. By now, Harland was 40 years old when he became jobless once again. In 1930, the Shell Oil Company, looking at Harland’s experience, offered him another chance to run a gas station.

As soon as he took charge of the gas station, Harland once again focused on customer care to increase sales. Since this station was located on a highway, he personally offered free extra food to travelers who stopped there. At that time, he only had one dining table in his room, where six people could sit and eat. At first, customers loved his hot dishes like country ham and string beans. But later, fried chicken was added to his menu. Soon, his fried chicken became so popular that he opened a full restaurant next to the gas station, with space for 142 people to sit and eat. This restaurant was named “Harland Sanders Court and Café.” Earlier, customers only ate there while passing by, but now people started coming from far away just to visit Sanders Café.

During this time, Harland faced another challenge, because earlier making fried chicken used to take 30 minutes to prepare the chicken, and because of this, customers had to wait a long time. This problem was hurting the reputation of Harland’s restaurant. To solve it, Harland tried a new method. Instead of frying chicken in a pan, he started frying it in a pressure cooker. Surprisingly, this trick worked! The chicken that earlier took 30 minutes was now ready in only 8 minutes. Harland was very happy with his restaurant and kept improving his fried chicken recipe day by day. But suddenly, another problem came. In 1939, World War II began, and once again America fell into economic trouble.

Because of this, very few customers came to Harland’s restaurant, and people even stopped going out of their homes. The situation became so bad that Harland could no longer manage, and in 1942, when he was 52 years old, he had to close his Harland Sanders Café. In 1945, when World War II ended, Harland decided to open a restaurant again. But since he could not manage everything alone and did not have the money to open one, he partnered with a friend and opened another restaurant on a highway in Georgetown, Kentucky. This restaurant brought him so much success that in 1949, the Governor of Kentucky gave him the honorary title of “Colonel.” From that day, Harland became known as Colonel Harland Sanders.

But his partnership with his friend did not go well. So, Colonel Harland paid him off and made the whole restaurant his own. With time, his fried chicken became even more famous. One day, Colonel Harland received a call from a real estate agent who offered to buy his restaurant at a good price. The agent kept repeating the offer, but Colonel Harland refused to sell. However, six months later, a new highway project began, and most of the traffic was diverted away. As a result, 90% of the traffic in front of his restaurant disappeared, and sales also dropped by 90%.

Now, Colonel Harland had no other option left. A restaurant that could once be sold for $165,000 was now not even selling for $80,000. In the end, he somehow managed to sell it for only $7,500. At that time, Colonel Harland was 65 years old, and apart from a $105 social security check, he had no other source of income. After facing failure many times in life, at the age of 65, Colonel Harland came up with a new idea. He thought, why not franchise his fried chicken recipe? For this purpose, he registered his recipe under the name Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Together with his second wife, Claudia, he traveled in his car carrying a pressure cooker and chicken. He used to visit different restaurants across America, cook his chicken there, and let the owners taste it. If the restaurant owner liked it, he would immediately buy the rights. For every chicken sold, Colonel Harland earned a royalty. Colonel Harland kept traveling in his car and kept expanding his recipe’s network. In one interview, he said that many times he had to spend nights sleeping inside his car. The recipe that was once only famous in Kentucky was now becoming known all across America under the name Colonel Harland Sanders.

After eight years, when Colonel Harland was 73 years old, more than 600 restaurants had already taken his franchise. But by this time, since Colonel Harland was getting very old, he could no longer manage everything by himself. So, in 1964, he sold KFC Corporation to a businessman from Kentucky for 16.5 million dollars. In that deal, it was agreed that the KFC logo would always have the picture of Colonel Harland Sanders, and only Colonel Harland would appear in TV interviews for KFC. This meant that even though someone else would run the company, the face of KFC would always remain Colonel Harland Sanders. For this role, he was hired by KFC with a salary of 6,250 dollars.

It is also important to mention that the company which bought KFC later changed the recipe as well. Because of this, Colonel Harland filed a court case against the company. He believed, “If it is not the recipe I created, then why is it being sold with my picture on it?” Out of anger over this issue, Colonel Harland even opened another restaurant in the name of his wife, Claudia Sanders, where the menu included the original KFC chicken. But KFC Corporation, the company he himself had built, did not like this at all and filed a lawsuit against him. The court decided that Colonel Harland could not run a restaurant under his own name, so he had to rename it “Claudia Sanders Café.”

Even today, this restaurant exists under the name Claudia Sanders Dinner House, and it is the only non-KFC restaurant in the world where the original authorized KFC fried chicken is still served. And this is how a full stop was placed on the very difficult but inspiring life of Colonel Harland Sanders.