KFC’s Colonel Sanders

KFC story began at the turn of last century, when a young boy, Harland Sanders, became an accomplished cook through ‘family necessity’. Born in 1890 in Henryville, Indiana, Sanders’ father died when he was young, leaving his mother working several jobs to provide for him and his two siblings.

He spent considerable years doing casual work and completing his service commitment as a wagoner in Cuba being awarded the Cuban Pacification Medal (Army). He was honorably discharged in February 1907.

Then, he got hired by the railway as a laborer. However, he got fired for fighting with a coworker. While he worked for the railway, he studied law--until he ruined his legal career by getting into another fight.

In 1930, Colonel Sanders purchased a service station, motel and café in Corbin, Kentucky, Kentucky.

And every Sunday night, Sanders would cook his family a delicious meal - country ham, steak and fried chicken. With travelers asking him for dining recommendations, Sanders realized the potential for extra earnings if he served hungry travelers his family’s dinner. Sanders served meals for travelers in the back of the service station at his own dining table, which seated six people. By 1937, the culinary skills of Sanders became well known and he built the Sanders Café, which seated 142 people.

Over the next ten years he tried different seasonings to flavor his chicken. In 1939, The Colonel perfected his Original Recipe chicken with his secret blend of 11 herbs and spices, pressure-cooked to seal in the finger lickin' goodness.

Sanders’ food became so well-known that Kentucky Governor Ruby Laffon gave Sanders the famed (but honorary) title of Colonel “in recognition of his contributions to the state’s cuisine.”

Business continued to boom as it was located along U.S. 25, the main north-south route through central Kentucky. He then sold the business when the town was bypassed by a highway Interstate 75.

He then travelled the United States by car, cooking chicken for restaurant owners and their employees. By the age of sixty-five the Colonel had 600 Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchise outlets dotted across the United States and Canada.

This as 1964, the year is which he sold the American business for $2 million, leading to another rags to riches story. At age 90, Sanders passed away from pneumonia. At that time, there were around 6,000 KFC locations in 48 countries.
KFC’s Colonel Sanders

Early history of McDonalds

In 1937, the MacDonald brothers opened a drive-in serving shakes restaurant (the Airdrome) in Arcadia, California selling hot dogs, orange juice, coffee and tea.

In 1940, Dick and Mac McDonald opened McDonalds Bar-B-que restaurant in San Bernardino, California.  Dick and Mac made fifteen-cent burgers and sold them like crazy. Little did they know that it was a restaurant that would not only change the face of culture but eventually impact on economics across the entire world.

The restaurant was mechanized and standardized far ahead of its time. Cast-iron grills that lost heat when loaded with beef were replaced by stainless-steel grills that were double the size and easier to clean and held heat better.

Their introduction of the "Speedee Service System" in 1948 established the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant. It’s selling 15 cent hamburgers and 10cent fries.

Dick McDonald came up with the idea of the golden arch in 1953, not long before the brothers opened their first franchise store in Phoenix, Arizona.

In 1955, Ray Kroc, a salesman who owned the rights to the mixers the brothers used to make the milkshakes, was granted the exclusive rights to develop the McDonalds franchise in the United States.

The present corporation dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois on April 15, 1955, the ninth McDonald's restaurant overall.

Ray Kroc eventually took over the business, drove the McDonald’s restaurants into success, and later led McDonald worldwide expansion.

In 1961, Dick and Mac sold their rights in the business to Ray Kroc for $2.7 million.
Early history of McDonalds

Pizza Hut in history

Pizza migrated to the United States in the late nineteenth century. The first pizzeria in the United States was established by Italian bakers in New York in 1902. The history of Pizza hut began in 1958, when what is now the world's largest pizza franchise was born. Pizza Hut is the world's largest pizza restaurant chain and is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc., whose restaurants total approximately 34,000 restaurants.

Frank Carney, an 18-year old student at the University of Wichita, read an article about pizza in the Saturday Evening Post and decoded to open a pizza parlor in 1958. With his brother Dan Carney, Franck opened a pizza parlor in Wichita, Kansas. They borrowed $600 form their mother to start a business. They opened a small pizzeria at a busy Wichita intersection on June 15, 1958. At that time the original Pizza hut was at Wichita State University with 25 seats.

The mixed the dough in a plastic baby bathtub and gave away pizza slice to attract customers, When making the sign for the restaurant they only had enough room for nine letters and because they made pizza's they wanted pizza in the name, that only left 3 letters and because the restaurant looked like a hut they named it Pizza Hut.

A family member remarked that their little building looked like a hut and the name Pizza Hut was born. After just over a year the Carneys owned five Wichita Pizza Huts. Their first franchise was opened in 1959 in Topeka, Kansas.

In 1963, Pizza Hut designed a building style that was adopted for all restaurants throughout the chain. By 1971 Pizza Hut had added franchises in Australia and Europe making it the world’s number one pizza restaurant chain in both sales and number of outlets.

In 1977, Pizza Hut was acquired by PepsiCo, and Pizza Hut began a process to Americanized its image. By 1990 Pizza Hut ranked fourth in sales among all chain restaurants.
Pizza Hut in history

Pizza in America

Before the 1950s, most people in America had never seen or heard of ‘pizza’. In the mass emigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans to the United States between 1880 and 1920 came multitudes of Southern Italian peasants fleeing from economic hardship.

From its humble origin on the street of Naples, pizza found its second home in the United States. Decades after the first Italian immigrants sold pizza on the streets of New York, the taste for pizza eventually saturated the interior of the country.

The first pizzeria in United States was opened in 1905 by Genarro Lombardi in the city of New York. He is credited with selling some of the first slices out of his place at 53rd ½ Spring Street in Little Italy.

Pizza became popular in the mid-twentieth century. It incorporated ingredients and styles and reflected the relative abundance of food in the country at the time. The first truly American pizza was born in 1943 when Chicagoan Ike Sewell introduced deep-dish pizza to the Windy City.

Chain restaurants quickly began popping up all over America. The first Pizza Hut sprang up in Wichita, Kansas, around 1958. It was also during 1950s that the first frozen pizza began lining the shelves at grocery stores.

In 1954, Sherwood Johnson and Ed Plummer opened the first Shakey’s Pizza Parlor restaurant in Sacramento. Shakey’s became the first franchise pizza chain in United States.
Pizza in America

Business history of Kentucky Fried Chicken

The man connected to that successful company was a failure for most of his life. Colonel Sanders perfected the secret blend of 11 herbs and spices of fried chicken in 1939. Colonel Harland Sanders was born on September 9, 1890. He masters range of regional dishes by age of seven.

In 1939, he developed a method of using pressure cooker to fry chicken.

When he was forty years old he moved to Corbin, Kentucky where he ran a gas station, but it burned down after a few years.

Sanders rebuilt it and added a motel and a place to eat. In 1956 Colonel Sanders sold Corbin, Kentucky, restaurant and enlist new franchisees. By 1964, from humble beginning, Colonel Sanders had 600 franchise outlets for his chicken across United States and Canada.

Sanders sold his business to two Louisville businessmen – Jack Massey and John Young Brown in 1964 for $2 million. He remained active as a spokesman for the firm and his image became a key part of the developing Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The company boomed under Massey and Brown’s direction selling shares publicly on the New York Stock Exchange in 1966, and growing in size to 3500 company owned or franchised outlets by 1970.

Sanders dies in 1980. In 1994 KFC adds non-fried chicken to menus in the US and Australia.

The success of Sander’s brand also increased the overall popularity of chicken as a mainstream American food, causing a surge of domestic chicken production and consumption.
Business history of Kentucky Fried Chicken