50 Fun Facts About KFC

The first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened in 1952 at Pete Harman's café in which state?

Utah restaurateur Pete Harman added the chicken to his menu, and by the time Sanders passed back through town, customers were lining up to order it.

Sanders' Original Recipe famously calls for how many herbs and spices?

11 herbs and spices, kept as a trade secret rather than patented, since a patent would have to publish the recipe and would eventually expire.

The name "Kentucky Fried Chicken" was coined by a man in which trade?

A sign painter lettering Pete Harman's café windows came up with it, agreeing that the name Kentucky carried an image of Southern hospitality.

What kind of game did KFC release on Steam in 2019?

Dating simulator I Love You, Colonel Sanders! cast players as a culinary student who must survive school, and might end up as the Colonel's business partner.

Sanders sold Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1964 for how much?

$2 million bought Sanders out of the American business, but a lifetime salary kept him on as the chain's ambassador, still appearing in its commercials.

John Y. Brown Jr., who led the 1964 buyout, went on to hold which office?

Governor of Kentucky from 1979 to 1983, Brown later went back to chicken, teaming up with country star Kenny Rogers on a restaurant chain.

Which Connecticut food and drinks company bought the chain in 1971?

Heublein watched the chain slump through the 1970s, then put Michael Miles, the ad man behind its campaigns, in charge to pull it out.

Which tobacco giant took over the chain's parent company in the early 1980s?

R. J. Reynolds sold the chain in 1986 to pay down debt from buying Nabisco and to concentrate on its tobacco and packaged food business.

Which soft-drink giant bought the chain in 1986, pairing it with Pizza Hut and Taco Bell?

PepsiCo then had to persuade the chain's franchisees to stop selling Coca-Cola products and switch to Pepsi drinks.

KFC's first outlet in China, the first by any Western chain, opened in 1987 in which city?

Beijing's outlet stood across the road from Tiananmen Square, and the chain went on to fill its China menus with Chinese fare such as rice dishes.

Parent company Tricon took its 2002 name, Yum Brands, from what?

Its stock ticker had read YUM on the New York Stock Exchange since the 1997 spin-off, so the corporate name simply caught up with the trading floor.

When the chain adopted its initials in 1991, which word was it trying to play down?

Fried had become a turn-off for health-conscious diners, who were moving to grilled and broiled chicken, so the chain led with its initials instead.

In 2020, which footwear brand sold a KFC shoe covered in a fried chicken print?

Crocs unveiled the fried-chicken clogs at New York Fashion Week, and the pairs sold came with charms made to look and smell like drumsticks.

To fry chicken faster in 1939, Harland Sanders modified which kitchen device?

Pressure cooker sets were sold for steaming vegetables; Sanders modified one to fry under pressure, turning out golden chicken in about eight minutes.

KFC's 2020 gaming console had a built-in chamber designed to do what?

Keep chicken warm using the console's own waste heat, that is; KFC even offered Sony and Microsoft tips on how to engineer a chicken chamber.

A KFC executive in 2013 named which spice company as the chain's biggest supplier of seasonings and marinades?

McCormick is also reported to finish the secret blend after another firm mixes the first half, so that no supplier ever handles the complete recipe.

Long before his chicken fame, Harland Sanders worked in which profession until a brawl with his own client ended it?

Law was something Sanders had studied by correspondence course, and he practised in Little Rock until he and a client came to blows inside the courtroom.

A 2016 newspaper test of a Sanders family scrapbook recipe matched KFC's taste only after adding which ingredient?

MSG, sprinkled on by a reporter, made the test batch virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, and a KFC spokesperson confirmed the chain uses it in Original Recipe.

In 2025, KFC announced it was moving its US headquarters out of Kentucky to which state?

Texas, specifically Plano near Dallas, got the head office, and about 100 corporate staff were given six months to follow the brand out of the state in its name.

Who became the first woman to play Colonel Sanders in KFC's US ads, in 2018?

Reba McEntire wore a fringed, glittering take on the white suit and sang in the ads, which launched the chain's Smoky Mountain BBQ chicken.

Which Saturday Night Live alum became the first celebrity Colonel in KFC's 2015 ad revival?

Darrell Hammond wore the white suit for only a few months before Norm Macdonald replaced him, a swap KFC said was meant to poke fun at itself for bringing the Colonel back.

Before his own 1970s hits, which singer performed the KFC jingle "Get a bucket of chicken, have a barrel of fun"?

Barry Manilow paid his dues in advertising, singing McDonald's spots and writing the State Farm and Band-Aid jingles before Mandy made him a star.

Which future fast-food founder, then a KFC franchisee, turned the bucket into a revolving roadside sign?

Dave Thomas took over struggling Columbus outlets, slashed the menu and put up the spinning bucket, then sold his stake and opened the first Wendy's in 1969.

After a 2018 UK chicken shortage, the apology ads rearranged the initials to spell what?

FCK appeared on an empty bucket in full-page British newspaper ads, above an apology admitting that a chicken restaurant without any chicken is not ideal.

Britain's 2018 KFC chicken shortage began days after the chain handed its deliveries to which logistics company?

DHL blamed operational issues for late and incomplete deliveries, and at the worst point more than half of the chain's 900 British outlets were shut.

Rostic's, the brand that replaced KFC's restaurants in 2023, serves customers in which country?

Russia had more than 1,000 KFC outlets when the invasion of Ukraine began; the chain pulled out, and the first outlet rebranded as Rostic's opened in central Moscow in April 2023.

KFC's Krusher range, sold as Krushem in some markets, is what kind of product?

Frozen beverages, ice-blended and pitched at teenagers, gave the chain something to sell between mealtimes rather than another side for chicken.

By 2015, which younger Southern rival had taken KFC's crown as America's top-selling chicken chain?

Chick-fil-A pulled ahead on US sales with a menu built around boneless chicken sandwiches, and KFC's response was to bring Colonel Sanders back to television.

Harland Sanders once ran a steamboat ferry linking Kentucky to the opposite bank of which river?

Ohio River crossings earned Sanders a small fortune, a rare win in a run of jobs that included streetcar conductor, railroad fireman and insurance salesman.

What replaces the bun in the Double Down sandwich?

Two fried chicken fillets hold bacon, cheese and sauce, yet at 540 calories it came in a little lighter than a fried chicken club sandwich from McDonald's.

KFC's 2010 announcement of the bunless Double Down fell closest to which day?

April Fools' Day doubters were wrong: the chain's website declared the Double Down real, no fooling, and it went on sale across the US on April 12, 2010.

The store manager credited with Japan's KFC Christmas later ran what?

KFC Japan made Takeshi Okawara its chief executive, years after he managed the country's first outlet and the chain took his Kentucky for Christmas pitch nationwide in 1974.

By most accounts, KFC's Christmas chicken in Japan was first pitched as a substitute for what?

American turkey dinner was what homesick foreigners could not get in Japan, so fried chicken was sold as the next best thing, though the chain itself tells more than one origin story.

KFC Japan began as a joint venture with which Japanese conglomerate?

Mitsubishi and KFC's American parent long held matching stakes of about 31 percent each, and the trading house nearly walked away in the early 1970s when the first stores lost money.

KFC made its Japanese debut in 1970 with a test store at which event?

Osaka World Expo crowds made the stand a hit, yet the first proper store, in a suburban Nagoya car park, struggled until the chain moved into city centres.

In Japan's "Curse of the Colonel" legend, fans of which baseball team threw a Colonel Sanders statue into a river?

Hanshin Tigers fans tossed it in while celebrating the 1985 pennant, and the club then waited 38 years, until 2023, for its next Japan Series title.

One of the Colonel's white suits sold at auction in 2013 for roughly how much?

$21,000, or $21,510 to be exact, was the winning bid from a KFC boss visiting from Japan, who put the jacket and black string tie on as soon as the suit was his.

Kentucky Fried Chicken's Harland Sanders was born in 1890 in which other state?

Indiana is where he was born, on a farm near Henryville, and after his father died young he did much of the family cooking while his mother worked at a tomato cannery.

After enlisting in the US Army in 1906 at just 16, Harland Sanders was shipped to which country?

Cuba was only a brief stint for the teenage former streetcar conductor, who was soon discharged and went on to fire locomotives on the railroads.

The "Colonel" in Colonel Sanders was what?

An honorary Kentucky title, first granted by the governor in the 1930s; only after a second commission in 1950 did he grow the goatee and start introducing himself as Colonel.

Which food writer's 1939 guide Adventures in Good Eating recommended Sanders Court and Café?

Duncan Hines, today a cake-mix name, was then a travelling salesman whose restaurant guide called the café a very good place to stop on the way to the Great Smokies.

Harland Sanders first served meals to travellers from what kind of roadside business, years before opening a proper restaurant?

A gas station in Corbin was where he began feeding hungry drivers around 1930, in a back room at first, and demand grew until his café there seated 142.

What ruined Harland Sanders's Corbin restaurant in the 1950s and pushed him, in his sixties, into franchising?

A new interstate bypassed it by seven miles, so he auctioned the place at a loss and, living on savings and a $105 Social Security cheque, took his recipe on the road.

Sanders kept the operations in which country out of his 1964 sale?

Canada was the one territory he kept for himself, and when the new owners found a loophole, he refused to hand over his stock until the contract guaranteed it.

Harland Sanders told a reporter the chain's new gravy tasted like what, prompting a franchisee to sue him for libel?

Wallpaper paste was his verdict on gravy he said was tap water mixed with flour and starch; a Bowling Green franchisee sued, and the court threw the case out.

Harland Sanders named his later Shelbyville dinner house for whom?

His wife Claudia ran it with him as the Colonel's Lady, and after a legal fight with the chain's owners over his name and image it was renamed the Claudia Sanders Dinner House.

In 2017, KFC sent a Zinger sandwich where?

The stratosphere was meant to host the sandwich for four days under a high-altitude balloon, but a leak brought it down after about 17 hours.

Which college basketball program moved into the KFC Yum Center when the arena opened in 2010?

Louisville Cardinals men's and women's teams took over the 22,000-seat arena, named for the chicken chain and its parent company, which both had their head offices in the city at the time.

What set off Harland Sanders's gunfight with the manager of a rival Corbin service station?

A painted-over sign pointing drivers to his pumps brought Sanders out armed, and when the rival shot dead a Shell employee at his side, the murder conviction that followed removed his competition.

Early franchisees paid Sanders what fee for every chicken they sold?

Four cents a bird, later a nickel, was all he asked on deals sealed with a handshake, in return for his recipe and the right to use his name and likeness.