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KFC, also known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, is a chain of fast food restaurants based in Louisville, Kentucky, known mainly for its fried chicken. Since 2002 KFC has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc.

The company was founded by Colonel Harland Sanders in 1952, with the abbreviated form of its name adopted in 1991. Starting in April 2007, the company began using its original appellation of Kentucky Fried Chicken again for its signage, packaging and advertisements in the United States as part of a new corporate re-branding program; newer and remodeled restaurants will have the new logo and name while older stores will continue to use the 1991 signage. Additionally, the company continues to use the abbreviation KFC freely in its advertising. Internationally the company is still known as KFC.

The popularity and novelty of KFC has led to the general formula of the fried chicken fast-food restaurant being copied by restaurant owners worldwide.

History

Born and raised in Henryville, Indiana, Sanders passed through several professions in his lifetime. Sanders first served his fried chicken in 1930 in the midst of the Great Depression at a gas station he owned in North Corbin, Kentucky. The dining area was named "Sanders Court & Café" and was so successful that in 1936 Kentucky Governor Ruby Laffoon granted Sanders the title of honorary Kentucky 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. 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 chicken to use a pressure fryer, resulting in a greatly reduced cooking time comparable to that of deep frying. In 1940 Sanders devised what came to be known as his Original Recipe.

The Sanders Court & Café generally served travelers, often those headed to Florida, so when the route planned in the 1950s for what would become Interstate 75 bypassed Corbin, he sold his properties and traveled the U.S. to sell his chicken to restaurant owners. Sanders entered into franchise agreements paying him five cents for each piece of chicken sold. 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. By the early 1960's 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 ($10.2 million adjusted for inflation). Since that time, the chain has been sold three more times, most recently to PepsiCo, 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. 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.

Today, some of the older KFC restaurants have become famous in their own right. One such restaurant is located in Marietta, Georgia. This store is notable for a 56-foot tall sign that looks like a chicken. The sign, known locally as the Big Chicken, was built for an earlier fast-food restaurant on the site called Johnny Reb's Chick, Chuck and Shake. It is often used as a travel reference point in the Atlanta area by locals and pilots.

Products

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Packaging

Wendy's restaurants founder Dave Thomas operated several Kentucky Fried Chicken His reasoning behind using the paper packaging was that it helped keep the chicken crispy by wicking away excess moisture. Additionally he invented the rotating-bucket-of-chicken sign that at one time was outside nearly every KFC.

Chicken

KFC's specialty is fried chicken served in various forms. KFC's primary product is pressure-fried pieces of chicken made with one of two types of breading: original recipe or extra crispy.

KFC has two lines of sandwiches: its "regular" chicken sandwiches and its Snackers line. The regular sandwiches are served on either a sesame seed or corn dusted roll and are made from either whole breast fillets (fried or roasted), chopped chicken in a sauce or fried chicken strips. The Snackers line are value priced items that consist of chicken strips and various toppings. They also sell several types of wraps.

A variety of smaller finger food products are available at KFC including chicken strips, chicken wings and popcorn chicken. These products can be ordered plain or with various sauces, including several types of barbecue sauces and buffalo sauce.

Several pies have been made available from KFC. The Pot Pie is a savory pie made with chicken, gravy and vegetables. In the second quarter of 2006, KFC introduced its variation on Shepherd's pie called the Famous Bowl. Served in a plastic bowl, it is layered with mashed potatoes or rice, gravy, corn, popcorn chicken, and cheese. The bowl had been available at KFC's special test market store in Louisville since the third quarter of 2005.

Other products

In some international locations, KFC may sell hamburgers, pork ribs or fish. In the US, KFC began offering the Fish Snacker sandwich during Lent in 2006. The Fish Snacker consists of a rectangular patty of Alaskan Pollock on a small bun, and is the fifth KFC menu item in the Snacker category.

Three types of salads are available at KFC, topped with roasted or fried chicken.

Sides

Other than fried chicken, many KFC restaurants serve side dishes like coleslaw, various potato-based items (including potato wedges, french fries and mashed potatoes with gravy), biscuits, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, rice, steamed vegetables and corn on the cob.

Some menu items are innovations in regional stores. The Singaporean management, for example, introduced the Colonel Burger in 1977, the Hot & Crispy Chicken in 1990, and the Zinger burger in 1993.

Discontinued products

• The Colonel's Rotisserie Gold- This product was introduced in the 1990s as a response to the Boston Market chain's roasted chicken products, and a healthier mindset of the general public avoiding fried food. Purportedly made from a "lost" Col. Sanders recipe, it was sold as a whole roaster or a half bird.
• Tender Roast Chicken- This product was an off-shoot of 'The Colonel's Rotisserie Gold'. Instead of whole and half birds, customers were given quarter roasted chicken pieces. For a time, customers could request chicken "original", "Extra Tasty Crispy", or "Tender Roast".
• Chicken Little sandwich- a value oriented sandwich that sold for $1.00 (USD) in the US during the late 1980s. It was a small chicken patty with mayonnaise on a small roll, similar to White Castle's mini chicken sandwich.
• Extra Tasty Crispy (ETC) Chicken- Much like the Extra Crispy served today, except ETC was prepared using chicken that had been soaking for at least a day in special marinade. There is some speculation that the marinade may have been made with trans-fats, and KFC boasts to no longer use trans-fats in their chicken. In the summer of 2007, KFC started marketing the chicken just as "Extra Crispy" without the marinade.

Nutritional value

KFC formerly used partially hydrogenated oil in its fried foods. This oil contains relatively high levels of trans fat, which increases the risk of heart disease. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) filed a court case against KFC, with the aim of making it use other types of oils or make sure customers know about trans fat content immediately before they buy food.

In October 2006, KFC announced that it would begin frying its chicken in trans fat-free oil. This would also apply to their potato wedges and other fried foods, however, the biscuits, macaroni and cheese, and mashed potatoes would still contain trans fat. Trans fat-free soybean oil was introduced in all KFC restaurants in the US by 30 April 2007. CSPI announced that it would immediately drop its lawsuit against KFC and was hopeful that this would create a ripple effect on other restaurants or fast food chains that prepare food rich in trans fat. "If KFC, which deep-fries almost everything, can get the artificial trans fat out of its frying oil, anyone can," CSPI Executive Director Michael Jacobson said in a statement.

Secret recipe

According to the nutritional information provided on KFC's own website, the ingredients for KFC Original Recipe Chicken are: Fresh chicken marinated with: salt, sodium phosphate and monosodium glutamate, and breaded with: wheat flour, sodium chloride and anti-caking agent (tricalcium phosphate), nonfat dry milk, dried egg whites and the Colonel's Secret Original Recipe Seasoning.

The Colonel's "secret recipe" of 11 herbs and spices is marketed as one of the best-kept trade secrets. The company's Web site describes the security protocol that protects the recipe as follows:

• The original handwritten recipe is purportedly locked in a vault in Louisville, Kentucky.
• Two separate suppliers of seasonings each provide only parts of the recipe, and do not know each other's identity.
• The spices are then later blended by machine at KFC's own commissaries, both to ensure standardization and to ensure that neither company has the complete recipe.
• The few people who do know the recipe are subject to a strict confidentiality agreement.

As with the secret Coca-Cola formula, the stories surrounding the recipe for KFC also serve a marketing purpose, with the company playing heavily on the mystery surrounding The Colonel's secret recipe.

KFC implies that its chicken's distinctive taste is influenced by the pressure frying technique. On his Food Network show Good Eats, Alton Brown stated that the pressure fryer shortens the cooking time but neither adds any special flavor to the chicken nor adversely affects the flavor.

In 1983, writer William Poundstone tackled the recipe in his book Big Secrets. He reviewed Sanders' patent application, and advertised in college newspapers for present or former employees willing to share their knowledge. From the former he deduced that Sanders had diverged from other common fried-chicken recipes by varying the amount of oil used with the amount of chicken being cooked, and starting the cooking at a higher temperature (about 400°F, 200°C) for the first minute or so and then lowering it to 250°F (120°C) for the remainder of the cooking time. Several of Poundstone's contacts also provided samples of the seasoning mix, and a food lab found that it consisted solely of sugar, flour, salt, black pepper and monosodium glutamate (MSG). He concluded that it was entirely possible that, in the years since Sanders sold the chain, later owners had begun skimping on the recipe to save costs. Sanders himself expressed anger at the changes made to the gravy, saying, "That friggin' ... outfit .... They prostituted every goddam thing I had. I had the greatest gravy in the world and those sons of bitches they dragged it out and extended it and wa­tered it down that I'm so goddamn mad."

Controversies

Trademark disputes

In 1971, Sanders sued Heublein Inc., KFC's parent company at the time, over the alleged misuse of his image in promoting products he had not helped develop. In 1975, Heublein Inc. unsuccessfully sued Sanders for libel after he publicly referred to their gravy as "sludge" with a "wallpaper taste".

Wages and working conditions

Like many fast food outlets, KFC employs a high proportion of young, unskilled workers, at or just above minimum wage, and its workers are not unionized. In New Zealand, KFC youth workers earn NZ$10.13 an hour. Staff at the Balmoral, Auckland store went on strike for two hours on December 3, 2005 after Restaurant Brands, the franchise holder, offered no wage increase in contract negotiations. In March of 2006, Restaurant Brands agreed to phase out youth rates in New Zealand, although no date was set.

Many stores in western Canada are unionized with the Canadian Auto Workers, and as a result many non-franchise stores in western Canada pay higher than minimum wage. In British Columbia, where minimum wage is $7.25 - 8 an hour, KFC employees make between $10 and $11 an hour.

Animal rights

Since 2003, animal rights and welfare organizations, led by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), have been protesting KFC’s treatment of the animals used for its products. These groups claim that the recommendations of the KFC Animal Welfare Advisory Council have been ignored. Adele Douglass, a former member of the council, said in an SEC filing reported on by the Chicago Times, that KFC "never had any meetings. They never asked any advice, and then they touted to the press that they had this animal-welfare advisory committee. I felt like I was being used."

KFC's responded by saying the chickens used in its products are bought from suppliers like Perdue Farms, Tyson Foods, and Pilgrim's Pride, and that these suppliers are routinely monitored for animal welfare violations. Several PETA undercover investigations and videos of these and other KFC suppliers purport to show chickens being beaten, ripped apart and thrown against walls which contradict KFC’s claims. There have been more than 12,000 demonstrations at KFC outlets since 2003 because of this alleged mistreatment of chickens by KFC suppliers.

Urban legends

Urban legends about KFC's rebranding from Kentucky Fried Chicken include the notion that the Commonwealth of Kentucky planned legal action against the chain due to a trademark on "Kentucky", and an assertion that KFC had been prevented from declaring their products to be made from chicken due to using genetically modified animals without feathers, beaks, or feet, which were easier to harvest. Both such tales have been debunked.

Advertising

Early television advertisements for KFC regularly featured Colonel Sanders licking his fingers and talking to the viewer about his secret recipe and the importance of a family joining one another for a meal. Despite his death in 1980, this angle was quite common through the 1980s and up until the early-mid 1990s.

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.

In the 80s, 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.

In 1997 KFC briefly re-entered the NASCAR Winston Cup Series as sponsor of the #26 Darrell Waltrip Motorsports Chevrolet with driver Rich Bickle at the Brickyard 400.

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" 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.

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 hails from Kentucky.

In 2006, KFC claimed to have made the first logo visible from outer space, though Readymix has had one since 1965. KFC says " marked the official debut of a massive global re-image campaign that will contemporize 14,000-plus 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 measured a record-breaking 87,500 square feet (8,129.0 m), and was placed in the Mojave Desert near Rachel, Nevada.

The chain has also advertised in video games. The Dreamcast game Crazy Taxi, has a KFC as a destination for patrons.

There are many KFC locations either adjacent to or co-extant with another (or several other) Yum! Brands restaurants, those being Long John Silvers, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and A&W Restaurants. Many of these locations behave like a single restaurant, offering a single menu with food items from both restaurants.

International operations

Canada

In French-speaking Quebec, KFC is known as PFK (Poulet Frit Kentucky). This was originally necessary because of Quebec's prohibition on commercial signs in languages other than French; in the early 1990s, these regulations were relaxed to allow national chains to use their familiar name in Quebec, but KFC/PFK continues to be one of the few non-Quebec companies to use a French name in the province. This is one of the few instances in which the KFC initialism is changed for the local language; even in France itself, the chain is called KFC.

China

KFC is known as 肯德基炸鸡 (pinyin: Ken de ji fried chicken) in China.

It opened its first store in Qianmen Beijing, the capital city in 1987. In 2007, it has over 1800 restaurants in 402 cities in all mainland China's provinces other than Tibet. From 2000 to 2005, it was selected as the "Best chain store brand." In 2005, it was given the "Chinese special permit award."

KFC is the most popular Western fast-food chain in the People's Republic of China. Local menu items include egg tarts, and lotus root salad. KFC in China also serves other poultry in addition to chicken.

Japan

A life size statue of the Colonel stands in front of most stores in Japan. Fried chicken is an especially popular dish at Christmas time and on Christmas Eve many families (who have made reservations weeks in advance), have their traditional Christmas dinner of Kentucky Fried Chicken at home. KFC is so prevalent in Japan that many Japanese unknowingly consider it to be a Japanese company.

Islamic countries

Most KFC stores located in predominantly Islamic countries prepare foods in accordance with halal guidelines.

Global locations

See also

• List of fast-food restaurants

References

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3. Anne DiNardo. "Kentucky Fried Chicken: Fast Food Makeover". VMSD.com date=2005-08-29. Retrieved 2007-08-28. {{cite web}}: Missing pipe in: |publisher= (help)
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16. Poundstone, William (1983). Big Secrets: The Uncensored Truth About All Sorts of Stuff You are Never Supposed to Know. New York: Morrow. pp. 228 pages. ISBN 0-688-02219-7.
17. Poundstone, pp 20-21.
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21. The New Zealand Herald (2005). "KFC staff to strike". The New Zealand Herald. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
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23. Securities and Exchange Commission (2006). "Relating to an Animal Welfare Standards Report - Shareholder Proposal". EDGAR Online, Inc. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
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25. CNN (2003). "Pamela Anderson takes on KFC". CNN. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
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27. Barbara and David Mikkelson. "Tastes like Chicken". Urban Legends Reference Pages.
28. Animate Clay!. "Vinton Studio Commercials". Animate Clay!.
29. KFC (2006). "KFC Creates World's First Brand Visible from Space". Press Release. KFC. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
30. Stephen Hutcheon (2006). "Giant Nullarbor logo zooms back into focus". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2007-10-28.
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32. Jack Marr, Alcinda Hatfield. "Fast-Food Restaurants: Just What Eastern China's Consumers Ordered". USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
33. ^ The Age (2005). "Deck the malls, it's Yuletide in Japan". The Age Company Ltd. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)

External links

• Official site

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• Companies based in Louisville
• Companies established in 1939
• Fast-food chains of the United States
• Fast-food franchises
• Fast-food poultry restaurants
• Kentucky cuisine
• Orphan initialisms