October 2024
Regardless of whether you are a fan of fried chicken or not, everyone knows the name and face of one of the most successful fried chicken restauranteurs in modern history, the man referred to simply as “The Colonel.”
Colonel Harland Sanders was the Indiana-born businessman and founder of fast food chicken restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken. With his trademark white hair, goatee, spectacles, white suit, string tie and honourary title of “Kentucky Colonel,” he was the public face and image of the company. This continued even after he ceased having an active role in the company, in favour of being their paid spokesman, dressed in his trademark white suits, made by Toronto’s Walter Beachamp Tailor. His name and image are still symbols of the company to this day.
During the Great Depression, Sanders opened a roadside restaurant in North Corbin, Kentucky, where he developed “secret recipe” and patented method of cooking chicken in a pressure fryer, rather than a deep fryer. Seeing the potential for franchising his restaurants, Sanders opened his first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in 1952 in Salt lake City, Utah.
Sanders sold the majority of his American franchises in 1964, disillusioned with the draconian tax laws of the Internal Revenue Services, but he retained the American franchising rights, including operations in Canada. He began a partnership with Toronto entrepreneur George Gardiner’s Scott’s Hospitality Group, who operated a chain of Scott’s Chicken Villa under the Kentucky Fried Chicken banner, staring in 1962.
Scott’s Chicken Villa retained the original recipe flavour, which the American restaurants had altered, along with other food items, as a cost-cutting measure. Disgruntled Kentucky Fried Chicken fans from America were known to cross the border to buy Scott’s chicken instead.
Sanders was openly critical about the lack of quality control in favour of cost-cutting and money grubbing, something that went against his deeply-held religious morals as a hardworking promoter who valued quality control over profit. If service and food were not up to his high standards, he would have their franchise licence revoked, something that happened many times after Sanders made surprise visits to franchise outlets.
In 1965, Sanders and his wife and his wife Claudia moved to Mississauga, Ontario, to oversee the Canadian operations. He bought a modest, split-level bungalow in the Lakeview area of south Mississauga, not the kind of house that one might expect a millionaire to own. Harland and Claudia lived part of the year in this house until his death in 1980 at age 90.
Instead of living an extravagant lifestyle, Sanders used most of his wealth from his growing Canadian business to fund the Harland Sanders Charitable Organization. One of the recipients Colonel Sander’s philanthropy is Trillium Health Partners, which opened the Colonel Harland Sanders Family Care Centre at the Mississauga Hospital in 1998.
That’s a great legacy for a charismatic southern gentleman with a silver goatee, who simply wanted to serve high-quality fried chicken.
Claudia Sanders Dinner House
The concept for the off-shoot restaurant, Claudia Sanders Dinner House, as a result of Colonel Sanders disenchantment with the recipe changes at KFC after he sold the company to Heublein Spirits. Opened in 1968, next to the house which the Sanders family lived in between 1959 and 1984 (when not in Mississauga) and became the first headquarters of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Colonel Sanders opened the restaurant in response to the recipe changes at KFC after selling the company, changes that he openly criticized as diminishing the quality of the food products. The Dinner House restaurant was subject to a lawsuit by the owners of KFC, as it was promoted by Sanders who was still the face of KFC. The lawsuit was settled out of court with a $1 million payment to Sanders, and the restaurant, which was originally called “Claudia Sanders, The Colonel’s Lady Dinner House,” changed its name.
Claudia Sanders sold the restaurant in 1980, after the death of the Colonel.
Sources: Chapter 11: Colonel Sanders – Visit Mississauga, Colonel Sanders – Wikipedia, That time when KFC was Scott’s Chicken Villa and Colonel Sanders moved to Toronto (blogto.com), Claudia Sanders Dinner House – Wikipedia.
