Our story
KFC began with Colonel Harland Sanders, a roadside kitchen in Corbin, Kentucky, and a recipe of 11 herbs and spices that is still what the chicken is made of.
Harland Sanders was born on 9 September 1890, on a farm near Henryville, Indiana. He had a long list of jobs behind him before the one anybody remembers: by the time he was running service stations in Nicholasville and Corbin, Kentucky, he had started serving fried chicken to people passing through — and kept working at it until he had a cooking method and a blend of eleven herbs and spices he was satisfied with.
He was sixty-five when the company was incorporated. In the Netherlands KFC puts the middle of that story plainly: he soon became known as the Kentucky Colonel, and it stuck.
The recipe has not been written down in one place since. KFC says it does not know the whole of it either: two separate companies prepare the ingredients and a third combines them, so no one supplier holds it.
How KFC got here
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1930
A roadside kitchen in Corbin
At forty, Harland Sanders buys a roadside motel in Corbin, Kentucky, and begins serving his southern-style chicken.
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1939
Eleven herbs and spices
The Colonel settles on the blend of 11 herbs and spices that is still used today — and is still secret.
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1950
The white suit
He wears the white suit in public for the first time, and from then on wears one every time he is out.
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1952
The first franchise
The first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opens near Salt Lake City, Utah.
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1956
On the road
He sells the Corbin restaurant and spends the next years driving the country signing up franchisees.
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1957
The bucket
The bucket arrives. KFC calls the 1957 original the thing that has come to be recognised worldwide.
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1964
He sells the company
With franchises spread across the United States, the Colonel decides to slow down and sells the company to investors.
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1976
The second most recognisable face in the world
An independent survey puts the Colonel second on a list of the most recognisable celebrities in the world.
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1980
He dies at ninety
Harland Sanders dies at the age of ninety.
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And one from this part of the world
The Zinger comes from the Caribbean
KFC says the Zinger was created in Trinidad and Tobago more than forty years ago. It is on the menu in Aruba three different ways.
Order from KFC Aruba
The same chicken, four restaurants on this island, pickup or delivery.