12 Important Things to Note from KFC’s Beginnings

Image Source: Act Two Magazine

1. Harland Sanders’ idea for a restaurant was based on customers’ suggestions. In the 1930s, Harland was running a petrol station along a road in Corbin, Kentucky. Whenever customers came to his filling station to buy petrol, they would ask where they could get food from nearby. From many questions and conversations about this, he opened his first restaurant in the front room of the petrol station. It is necessary for you to note that Harland Sanders had startup money. He was the owner of the petrol station as he had earlier purchased it. Furthermore, prior to this, Harland had had prior experiences in entrepreneurship including stints as a farm hand, in railroading, selling insurance and serving as a justice of peace. He had also started two companies: a steamboat ferry company and a manufacturing business. So he wasn’t in want of startup capital. This is significant and we must pay close attention to the fact that, in starting our dream business, sometimes, it is important to try out other small business opportunities as a way of raising money. It is not that you will do that ‘small business’ forever, but you have to start from somewhere in order to turn your dream into a reality. Harland’s restaurant was named ‘Sanders Court & Café’ and he worked simultaneously in several roles, including station manager, chief cook and cashier.
2. Within 6 years of starting his restaurant, Harland received recognition from the Kentucky State Governor, Ruby Laffoon. Word had spread about the restaurant and it was rapidly garnering reputation. In 1936, Governor Laffoon made Harland an honorary Kentucky Colonel in recognition of his contributions to the state’s cuisine. This is where Harland’s nickname (by which he is popularly known today) came: Colonel Sanders.
3. Harland Sanders left school at the age of 12. However, he still knew the importance of education and he later enrolled on an 8-week course in restaurant and hotel management at Cornell University so that he could learn more about his business. The knowledge gained from this course also helped him to forge new plans to start a restaurant chain by expanding with 2 more sites. From this point, we must understand the importance of education. Many people are deluded to think that education and schooling are the same thing. They think that because Bill Gates and co dropped out of school, they dropped out of education. Schooling may be time restricted but education is a lifelong process. The moment you stop learning, you start dying. Knowledge is life and power.
4. With a growing reputation and consequently a growing customer base, Harland moved from his petrol station cuisine into a bigger building across the street. That bigger building housed a 142-seat restaurant as well as a motel and a petrol station. It was upon this expansion that Harland enrolled for the 8-week course. However, Harland made a wrong move after completing the course by expanding to the 2 more sites mentioned before. The new sites failed soon after they were opened and Harland had to focus on improving the existing business. What we can learn from this is the importance of right-time-right-moves. Expanding was not a bad idea but Harland tried to do so at the wrong time and he probably didn’t research well enough before making the move. Before making key moves in business, the need for research and knowledge of customer behavior and proposed new environment cannot be overemphasized. It is important to know the potential and viability of your business in every new environment. Just because you can sell coffee in America doesn’t mean you can do the everywhere outside America.
5. Harland Sanders created the now famous secret recipe at the age of 50. Talk about being a late bloomer. At the age of 50, Harland wasn’t about to relent. He kept on going hard and his determination paid off. He is quoted in his autobiography, Life as I have known it has been finger lickin’ good, as saying, ‘no hours, nor amount of labour, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that was in me’. We as aspiring great entrepreneurs must learn not to relent ad rest on our achievements.  We must keep going until the end, until there’s nothing left to give. We must understand the need to go to the grave empty, for we do not need our substance after death.
6. Fried chicken wasn’t an original idea but Harland’s recipe made his business unique and different. Many people have tied themselves down because they think their ideas aren’t original enough. Well, fried chicken is actually a common food but no one could do friend chicken like Colonel Sanders, even till today. Coca-Cola isn’t the only soft drink company in the world but no one can do Coca-Cola like Coca-Cola does Coca-Cola. Get it? Find a way to tweak your idea and make it unique to you and you alone. If you think long and hard enough you will surely breakthrough.
7. Harland Sanders craved perfection. He always sought ways to be better than he was the previous day. It is recorded that he wasn’t satisfied with just perfecting the herbs and spices he used to create his secret recipe so he came up with a new and improved way of frying his chicken. This new way helped him save a lot of time and enabled him attend to his growing list of customers. It cut cooking time by one-third. In 1939, Adventures in Good Eating- a guide to America’s finest roadside restaurants, featured an endorsement of Harland’s motel and restaurant by Duncan Hines. This entry increased the restaurant’s popularity.
8. In 1939, the original building was burned down, but Harland reconstructed and reopened the restaurant. This proved that Harland wasn’t only passionate about his dream, he was also resilient. Resilience is the ability to spring back and rebound from disappointments. It is necessary for great achievements to be retained, sustained and multiplied.
9. Also, in the 1950s, Harland was forced to close down his erstwhile blossoming business. An interstate highway was completed which provided travelers with an alternative route which completely bypassed Harland’s site and so his customer numbers dwindled. His site’s value dropped drastically and he was forced to sell his business for what will amount to about $58,000 today- half of what it was valued at the previous year. Harland retired and collected his first social security paycheck for $105. Harland paid of all his debts and became almost penniless. Though he was already in his 60s, this setback did not put Harland down for long. Before anyone knew it, Harland had modified his business model and came up with the idea of franchising. He started taking his business to customers instead of waiting for customers to come to him.
10. KFC is popular for franchising. Harland was an early pioneer of this franchising business model. In order to revive his business and subsequently expand it, Harland would travel round the country, selling his recipe to restaurants and the concept of what is now known as Kentucky Fried Chicken or KFC, took off. He also came up with the idea of takeaways. The first takeaway purchase was made in Jacksonville, Florida in 1957. This idea was inspired from Harland’s daughter, Margaret. This shows that he was also willing to listen to good advice and adopt good ideas, no matter who they were from. This is vital for the survival and blossoming of any business: the ability to take good advice from anyone, no matter who that person may be. Wise entrepreneurs do not look down on anyone’s counsel but simply consider the ones that seem good and viable and then adopt them to help advance their business.
11. Despite his old age, in the 1960s, Harland would travel several thousand miles in order to ensure customer satisfaction. The customer is the determiner of the success of every business. Any business that doesn’t recognized the primary importance of their customers is a business set up for sure failure. No matter what business you’re in, the customer is the boss. You are serving them. This must be part of your business philosophy for you to flourish and stay very long in business.
12. By 1963, the business was already getting too big for Harland and he wasn’t getting any younger. Thus, after an attractive offer of a significant sum of $2 million (about $14 million today), he sold the business to an investment group headed by John Brown, Jack Massey and Pete Harman on the condition that he would remain the company’s ambassador. Harland was wise enough to know when to hand over his dream to people he trusted enough to advance it and smart enough not to completely let it go; thus, his face serves as the red-and-white logo of KFC everywhere. He also remained in charge of quality control and retain ownership of the KFC franchises in Canada.