Crispy chicken stripes

This article is about the fast food chicken restaurant chain. American crispy chicken stripes food restaurant chain headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, that specializes in fried chicken. Corbin, Kentucky, during the Great Depression.

KFC was one of the first American fast-food chains to expand internationally, opening outlets in Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Jamaica by the mid-1960s. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it experienced mixed fortunes domestically, as it went through a series of changes in corporate ownership with little or no experience in the restaurant business. KFC’s original product is pressure-fried chicken pieces, seasoned with Sanders’ signature recipe of “11 herbs and spices”. The constituents of the recipe are a trade secret. Sanders was unhappy with the 35 minutes it took to prepare his chicken in an iron frying pan, but he refused to deep fry the chicken, which he believed lowered the quality of the product. If he pre-cooked the chicken in advance of orders, there was sometimes wastage at day’s end. In July 1940, Sanders finalised what came to be known as his “Original Recipe” of 11 herbs and spices.

Although he never publicly revealed the recipe, he said the ingredients included salt and pepper and that the rest “stand on everybody’s shelf”. In 1952, Sanders franchised his recipe to his friend Pete Harman of South Salt Lake, Utah, the operator of one of the city’s largest restaurants. Don Anderson, a sign painter hired by Harman, coined the name “Kentucky Fried Chicken”. Kentucky was exotic and evoked imagery of Southern hospitality.

By 1963, there were 600 KFC restaurants, making the company the largest fast food operation in the United States. KFC popularized chicken in the fast food industry, diversifying the market by challenging the dominance of the hamburger. Pat Grace met with Saunders at his holiday home in near Toronto and agreed to franchise the brand in Ireland. In 1970 Grace returned to Ireland after a number of years in Canada to open his first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Phibsboro shopping centre in Dublin.