KFC

Type Industry Founded

Wholly owned subsidiary Restaurants 1930 (original)(North Corbin, Kentucky) 1952 (franchise)(South Salt Lake, Utah) Harland Sanders

Founder(s)

Headquarters Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. Key people Roger Eaton, President Harvey R. Brownlea, COO James O'Reilly, VP for Marketing Fried chicken, grilled chicken, related Southern foods $520.3 million USD (2007) [1] 24,000 (2007) [1] Yum! Brands KFC.com

Products

Revenue Employees Parent Website

KFC, founded and also known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, is a chain of fast food restaurants based in Louisville, Kentucky, in the United States. KFC has been a brand and operating segment, termed a concept of Yum! Brands since 1997

KF primarily sells chic en pieces wraps salads and sandwiches While its primary focus is fried chic en, KF also offers a line of grilled and roasted chic en products, side dishes and desserts Outside the USA, KF offers beef based products such as hamburgers or kebabs, poutine, pork based products such as ribs and other regional fare The company was founded as Kentucky Fried Chicken by Colonel Harland Sanders in 1952, though the idea of KFC's fried chicken actually goes back to 1930 Although Sanders died in 1980, he remains an important part of the company's branding and advertisements, and "Colonel Sanders" or "The Colonel" is a metonym for the company itself. The company adopted KFC, an abbreviated form of its name, in 1991. Newer and remodeled restaurants will adopt the new logo and name, while older stores will continue to use the 1980s signage. Additionally, Yum! continues to use the abbreviated name freely in its advertising. History

The restaurant in North Corbin, Kentucky where Colonel Sanders developed Kentucky Fried Chicken

The first KFC restaurant, situated inSouth Salt Lake, Utah and since replaced by a new KFC on the same site Born and raised in Henryville, Indiana, Sanders passed through several professions in his lifetime. [2] Sanders first served his fried chicken in 1930 in the midst of theGreat Depression at a gas station he owned in North Corbin, Kentucky. The dining area was named Sanders Court & Caf and was so successful that in 1935 Kentucky Governor Ruby Laffoon granted Sanders the title of honorary Ken u ky Colonel in recognition of his contribution to the state's cuisine. The following year Sanders expanded his restaurant to 142 seats, and added a motel he bought across the street.[3] When Sanders prepared his chicken in his original restaurant in North Corbin, he prepared the chicken in an iron skillet, which took about 30 minutes to do, too long for a restaurant operation. In 1939, Sanders altered the cooking process for his fried

 

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chicken to use a pressure fryer, resulting in a greatly reduced cooking time comparable to that of deep frying.[4] In 1940 Sanders devised what came to be known as his Original Recipe.[5] The Sanders Court & Caf generally served travelers, often those headed to Florida, so when the route planned in the 1950s for what would become Interstate 75 bypassedCorbin, he sold his properties and traveled the U.S. to sell his chicken to restaurant owners. The first to take him up on the offer was Pete Harman in South Salt Lake, Utah; together, they opened the first "Kentucky Fried Chicken" outlet in 1952.[6] By the early 1960s, Kentucky Fried Chicken was sold in over 600 franchised outlets in both the United States and Canada. One of the longest-lived franchisees of the older Col. Sanders' chicken concept, as opposed to the KFC chain, was the Kenny Kings chain. The company owned many Northern Ohio diner-style restaurants, the last of which closed in 2004. Sanders sold the entire KFC franchising operation in 1964 for $2 million USD, equal to $14,161,464 today.[7] Since that time, the chain has been sold three more times: toHeublein in 1971, to R.J. Reynolds in 1982 and most recently to PepsiCo in 1986, which made it part of its Tricon Global Restaurants division, which in turn was spun off in 1997, and has now been renamed to Yum! Brands. In 2001, KFC started test in Austin, Texas restaurants of "Wing Works" chicken wing line sold with one of a few flavored sauces. Also, KFC hired a consultant to develop a breakfast menu. [8] Additionally, Colonel Sanders' nephew, Lee Cummings, took his own Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises (and a chicken recipe of his own) and converted them to his own "spin-off" restaurant chain, Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken. Advertising

KFC's logo used from 1997 until November 2006 Despite his death in 1980, Sanders remains a key symbol of the company in its advertising and branding. Early television advertisements for KFC regularly featured Sanders licking his fingers and talking to the viewer about his secret recipe, and by the 1960s both the Colonel and the chain's striped buck et had become well-known. The bucket as product placement can be seen in the hands of both Annette Funicello and Dwayne Hickman in 1965's How o S uff a

Wild Bikini, and was also featured prominently in the 1968 Peter Sellers vehicle, The Party. KFC itself was featured in 1980's Superman II. The Colonel made appearances as himself in Jerry Lewis's The Big Mouth (1967), Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blast-Off Girls (1967) and Al Adamson's Hell's Bloody Devils (1970), as well as an appearance in 1968 on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Before he became a platinum-selling pop star in the 1970s, Barry Manilow sang the commercial jingle "Get a Bucket of Chicken",[39] which was later included on Barry Manilow Live as part of "A Very Strange Medley." Throughout the mid 1980s, KFC called on Will Vinton Studios to produce a series of humorous, claymation ads. These most often featured a cartoon-like chicken illustrating the poor food quality of competing food chains, mentioning prolonged freezing and other negative aspects.[40] TV ads also featured Foghorn Leghorn advisingHenery Hawk to visit the restaurant for better chicken. In the 1980s, KFC was an associate sponsor for Junior Johnson's NASCAR Winston Cup Series cars, with such drivers as Darrell Waltrip, Neil Bonnett, and Terry Labonte. A 1982 episode of Little House on the Prairie titled "Wave of the Future" featured a character presumed to be Col. Sanders offering Harriet Oleson a fried chicken franchise (perhaps a subliminal advertisement for KFC), but his character was credited as "Bearded Man" for legal reasons. This sub plot was an anacrhonism as Sanders had not yet been born at the time the episode was set (the late 19th century). In 1997, KFC briefly re-entered the NASCAR Winston Cup Series as sponsor of the No.26 Darrell Waltrip Motorsports Chevrolet with driver Rich Bickle at the Brickyard 400.

A co-branded Long John Silver's and KFC By the late 1990s, the stylized likeness of Colonel Sanders as the KFC logo had been modified. KFC ads began featuring an animated version of "the Colonel" voiced byRandy Quaid with a lively and enthusiastic attitude. He would often start out saying "The Colonel here!" and moved across the screen with a cane in hand. The Colonel was often shown dancing, singing, and knocking on the TV screen as he spoke to the viewer about the product.

A KFC Take-Away Trailer located inSargodha, Pakistan The animated Colonel is uncommon today. Still using a humorous slant, the current KFC campaign revolves mostly around customers enjoying the food. It also features a modified version of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" as the theme song for practically all its commercials, though the restaurant actually hails from Kentucky. In 2006, KFC claimed to have made the first logo visible from outer space, though Readymix has had one since 1965. [41][42] KFC says "It marked the official debut of a massive global re-image campaign that will contemporize 14,000plus KFC restaurants in over 80 countries over the next few years." The logo was built from 65,000 one-foot-square tiles, and it took six days on site to construct in early November. The logo was placed in the Mojave Desert near Rachel, Nevada.[43] It is located in the northern section of Rachel, Nevada at 37.6460N 115.7507W, a few miles from the eastern border of Area 51. Many KFC locations are co-located with one or more of Yum! Brands restaurants, Long John Silver's, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, or A&W Restaurants. Many of these locations behave like a single restaurant, offering a single menu with food items from both restaurants. [44]

One of KFC's latest advertisements is a commercial advertising its "wicked crunch box meal". The commercial features a fictional black metal band called "Hellvetica" performing live, the lead singer then swallows fire. The commercial then shows the lead singer at a KFC eating the "wicked crunch box meal" and saying "Oh man that is hot". In 2007, the original, non-acronymic Kentucky Fried Chicken name was resurrected and began to reappear on company marketing literature and food packaging, as well as some restaurant signage. In 2010, an advertisement was shown in Australia showing an Australian cricket fan giving West Indies fans KFC chicken to keep them quiet. The ad sparked a debate over racism in the ad, suggesting that all black people eat fried chicken. Fried chicken was eaten by black slaves[citation needed] because it was cheap and easy to make. Though KFC stated that it was "misinterpreted by

a segment of people in the US", [45] the ad was later pulled from TV. However, several ustralian commentators have e pressed the opinion that the ad is not racist, because this is not a racial stereotype in ustralia and the cricket fans in the ad are not frican merican, but West Indies cricket supporters (the West Indies cricket team was playing a Test cricket series against the ustralian cricket team at the time of the ad). [46][47] lso in 2010, Yum! signed a naming rights deal with the Louisville rena uthority for Louisville's new downtown arena, which opened on October 10 of that year as theKFC Yum! Center.