In 1956, Colonel Harland Sanders looked helplessly as a newly built interstate highway passed 3 kilometers away from his restaurant, with a look of helplessness on his face. He knew that his restaurant in Corbin, Arkansas, would lose many customers to the new highway. Without a stable source of customers, it would be difficult for him to sustain his business.
The 66-year-old colonel is not one to give up easily. He turned things around with a mysterious recipe for fried chicken and perseverance. An unexpected turn of events created what would become the huge KFC empire.
Harland Sanders was born in 1890 on a farm near Henryville, Indiana, USA. When he was 6 years old, his father died and his mother had to work long hours to make ends meet. She peeled potatoes for the cannery during the day and sewed clothes for others at night, leaving her three children to cook at home. Sanders is the eldest, so he naturally does all the cooking.
When he was 12 years old, his mother remarried. His stepfather didn't like children, and his mother didn't like Sanders either. When he was only in seventh grade, Sanders was sent to work on a farm in Greenwood.
After working on the farm for several years, Sanders decided to go out into the world and make his own way. Over the next 25 years, Sanders worked as many jobs as he tried on hats: he worked as a painter, sold tickets on a tram, drove a ferry, sold insurance, served in the military, and He worked on the railroad and even got a correspondence law degree, which enabled him to serve for a time as the sheriff of Little Rock, Kansas. While constantly switching jobs, he always believed that he would have his own career.
In 1929, he finally opened a gas station in Corbin. He still loves to cook and often cooks his signature dish—fried chicken—for his wife and children. Because their family lives next to a gas station, people who come to refuel can often smell the aroma wafting from his house. Later, Sanders would serve freshly cooked meals at his family's dining room table, and fried chicken was often an essential entrée.
Not long after, there were so many people coming to dine that the small restaurant could no longer accommodate it. Sanders moved across the street to a 142-seat restaurant and named it the Sanders Restaurant. His reputation as a chef grew, and in 1935, Kentucky Governor Ruby LaFond awarded him the title of honorary colonel. The new colonel was innovative and built a motel next to the restaurant. Sanders Hotel and Inn, long before the famous Howard Johnson Motor Inn was built, became the first enterprise to integrate food, accommodation and gas.
Sanders wants to maintain that unique style, that family atmosphere, because he knows customers like to eat as a family and not order from a menu.
But as the number of customers increases, it becomes more and more difficult for him to serve what the customers want quickly. Sanders went to Cornell University in New York to study hotel industry management courses, which helped him solve some management problems. But serving fried chicken to so many customers quickly is not an easy task. He was always busy frying chicken for customers while listening to anxious customers complaining next to him.
The invention of the pressure cooker was a godsend to Colonel Sanders. It can greatly shorten the cooking time without burning the food. In 1939, Sanders bought his first pressure cooker. After experiments, he was able to use it to fry chicken in 15 minutes as he expected, and the fried chicken condiment he prepared with 11 spices became perfect day by day. Even during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Sanders was full of energy and energy because of his good reputation for his food and his spacious business premises, which attracted many diners.
In the 1940s, his business was under great threat. Due to gasoline rationing during World War II, the number of tourists visiting his restaurant dropped significantly. Business conditions were so bad that he had to close the restaurant. But as soon as the war ended, the colonel's restaurant reopened and maintained a steady income for several years.
By the early 1950s, Sanders' assets had risen to $155,000. This asset, coupled with his bank deposits and monthly social welfare payments, is enough to ensure that his family can live a comfortable life.
However, changes in the outside world once again threatened his stable life. In a big blow to Sanders, plans for a new interstate highway across Kentucky were finalized and unveiled to the public - the highway would pass through Corbyn just a few miles away. The interstate highway is a good thing for tourists, but it will take away a large number of Sanders' customers. Tourists taking the new highway will no longer be able to patronize his restaurant. After the new highway opened to traffic, Sanders' business took a sharp turn. By 1956, Sanders had to sell off assets to pay off debts, and the proceeds amounted to only half of his total assets before the road opened. Even his bank savings were exhausted in order to pay off his debts. All of a sudden, Harlan Sanders, the once respected colonel, was faced with ending his life in poverty and poverty.
Sanders was thinking hard all day, wondering how to get out of the predicament, and suddenly remembered that he once sold the fried chicken recipe to a restaurant owner in Utah. This boss did a good job, so several restaurant owners also bought Sanders' fried chicken condiments. They paid Sanders 5 cents for every chicken they sold. Desperate, Sanders thought, maybe there were others who would do the same.
So Sanders took a pressure cooker and a 50-pound condiment bucket and drove his Ford car on the road. Wearing a white suit and a black bow tie, the white-haired colonel, dressed like a southern gentleman, stopped at the door of every restaurant to sell the secret recipe for fried chicken, and asked for a fried chicken demonstration for the boss and the clerk. If they like fried chicken, sell them a franchise, provide the ingredients, and teach them how to fry it.
The restaurant owners felt that it was a waste of time to listen to this strange old man's nonsense. Sanders' publicity work was difficult. In the first two years, he visited more than 600 restaurants, and only a few restaurant owners added fried chicken to their menus. However, he kept at it and finally made a breakthrough. From then on, his business snowballed. By 1960, 200 restaurants had purchased franchises. The 70-year-old Sanders is surrounded by people who want to cooperate with him, and restaurant representatives who want to buy franchises are still flocking in. Sanders built a school where these restaurateurs came to KFC to learn how to operate a franchised fried chicken restaurant.
The image of the colonel dressed as a southern gentleman cooking Kentucky Fried Chicken attracted many reporters and movie hosts. It didn't take long for Sanders' neatly trimmed white beard and black-rimmed glasses to become a nationally recognized trademark. Sanders often joked: "My smile is the best trademark."
The effect of his live advertisement was so good that after Sanders sold all the exclusive rights in 1964, The new owner of these interests also paid him a lifetime salary and asked him to continue to serve as a spokesman for Kentucky Fried Chicken and promote it widely. Not long before he passed away at the age of 90, he still traveled for more than 70 days every year to promote Kentucky Fried Chicken. Saunders has proven that it is not only possible to start a new business late in life, but also to create a very successful industry. Kentucky Fried Chicken now has tens of thousands of chain stores in nearly 100 countries.
If Sanders had not had the confidence to believe in his product and the perseverance to take action to the end, today’s Kentucky Fried Chicken would have been lost long ago.
The success of Colonel Sanders illustrates a problem, that is, "perseverance is the most precious thing in life." If you have perseverance, age is not an obstacle to success.