How Colonel Sanders Franchised a Recipe Before Fast Food
In 1952 Harland Sanders licensed his fried chicken to a Utah restaurant for four cents a bird. Here's how the deal worked and what service firms packaging their know-how can learn from it.
In 1952, Harland Sanders reached an agreement that let Pete Harman, a restaurant owner in South Salt Lake, Utah, cook and sell Sanders' fried chicken. In return, Harman paid him four cents for every chicken sold. Sanders was in his early sixties and had no chain, no headquarters and no plans to build restaurants. What he had was a recipe, a cooking method built around a pressure cooker, and a blend of eleven herbs and spices. Within a few years he was driving around the country signing up more restaurants on similar terms, and by the late 1950s the business had a headquarters in Shelbyville, Kentucky.
