Harland Sanders, born in 1890, developed his fried chicken recipe of eleven herbs and spices in 1929 at a highway service station in Corbin, Kentucky, where a Shell Oil executive had put him in charge amid the Wall Street crash. By 1935 his cooking was popular enough that the governor decorated him for his contribution to regional cuisine, and a year later he opened his first restaurant.
A road expansion forced him to close it, so he traveled the country selling his recipe for one cent per plate of chicken sold. His first franchise, Kentucky Fried Chicken, opened in Salt Lake City; by 1960 there were more than 200 locations, expanding into Canada, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Japan, the Bahamas and Jamaica. In 1964 he sold the business to an investor group for $2 million and agreed to be KFC’s image for a $75,000 annual salary.
PepsiCo bought KFC in 1986, and Yum! Brands, which also owns Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, now runs roughly 20,000 restaurants in 123 countries. Separately, on Monday Yum!
Brands announced it ended its relationship with Encanto Restaurants, the operators of KFC and Taco Bell in Puerto Rico. Sanders died of leukemia in Kentucky on December 16, 1980, at age 90.