The Truth Behind The Success Of KFC – An Inspirational Story.

Introduction:

KFC is the world’s largest food chain restaurants in the world.

We all know this success of KFC, But how many of us knows what it took to establish this world’s largest food chain restaurants.

Colonel Sanders, The founder of Kentucky fried chicken(KFC) Had to over overcome thousands of failures before seeing this massive success.

 The Success of KFC is a real inspiration for all the people who gets discouraged by failures.

I can ensure that by the end this story you will have a totally different mindset about failure.

KFC Success Story:

This is the story of a boy from Henryville, Indiana in 1895.

When he was six years old his father passed away and his mother had to start working in a tomato cannery leaving him to cook and care for
his siblings.

Life hit him hard at a very young age and because of the difficult situations he faced, he had to work as a farmhand at that very young age..

When he was in sixth grade he dropped out of high school and left his home.

He started working as a painter of horse carriages.

When he was 16 years old, he faked his age to join in the US Army. After being honorably retired a year later.

He started working as a railway either
Worker and studied law at the nearby University.

At that time, he ruined his legal career by getting into a fight.

He was forced to live with his mom and get a life insurances selling job.

He got fired after some time for not following orders.

Few years later he started a ferry boat company and it was an instant success.

Later on, He tried cashing in on his ferry boat business to create a chemical lamp manufacturing company only to find out that another company was already selling electric lamps much better than his company’s lamps.

With all this hardship in life, this guy didn’t give up.

He moved to work as a salesman for a tire company.

But again he lost his job when the company closed its manufacturing plant.

At the age of 40 he met the general manager of an oil company who asked him to run a gas service station for him, but the station had to close down again because of the Great Depression.

That same year the Shell Oil Company offered him a gas service station rent-free in return for paying them a percentage of sales.

He started operating the gas service station and also began to serve chicken dishes and few other simple meals for the people who are stopping by at the station.

His pan-fried chicken recipe soon became a favorite one with the people of that area and made him famous in that area.

A few years later he closed the station and started a proper restaurant.

After getting a proper success in this business he started to advertise his food and to his shock an argument started out of the blue with a local competitor and resulted in a fatal shootout leading to death of one of his employee.

Four years later he bought a motel next to his chicken restaurant hoping for better business but it caught fire and burnt down to the ground along with the chicken restaurant.

Even with all these failures, this ambitious man started a new motel with a 140 seat restaurant until he was forced to close it because of world war-2.

When the World War-2 had ended, He tried selling his Chicken recipes to other restaurants.

His recipe was rejected 1009 times.

When finally in 1952 he sold his secret recipe “Kentucky Fried Chicken(KFC)” for the first time to the city’s largest restaurant.

It became quick success and as a result several other restaurant owners franchised the recipe and paid him 4 cents per chicken.

However, good times didn’t last very long, His own restaurant had a downfall when an interstate highway reduced the number of customers visiting the restaurant.

He sold the restaurant and was left only with his savings and 105$ a month from Social Security.

So finally, he pursued his dream to franchise his chicken concept nationwide and traveled the Unites States Of America looking for suitable restaurants.

He opened a new restaurant and a company headquarters in 1959.

He often used to sleep in the back of his car.

He visited restaurants and offered to cook his chicken and if the restaurant owners liked his recipe then he negotiated franchise rights.

In 1965 at the age of 75 he was just getting started after years of rejection, failures, misfortunes Colonel Sanders franchise approach became highly successful.

KFC was one of the first fast-food chains to expand world wide and opening outlets in Canada, UK, Mexico and Jamaica.

By the mid 1960s the Colonel Sanders remained the company’s symbol.

After selling it he traveled over 400,000 kilometers a year visiting KFC restaurants and delighting customers all around the world.

At 90 years of age Colonel Sanders passed away at that time there were around 6,000 KFC locations in 48 different countries.

In 2018 there were 22,621 KFC restaurants globally.

Conclusion:

If you are depressed by rejection or discouraged by setbacks, Remember the story of Colonel Sanders, a sixth grade dropout, fired from different jobs, spoiled his legal career, failed due to Great Depression, Fire accident and World War two and despite all these he became the founder of the world’s most famous food chain restaurants after reaching retirement age.

Colonel Sanders, the creator of one of the largest fast-food chains in the world has achieved many things. But above all, he was a great success story to be learned from.

With this story of colonel sanders we can learn that despite of thousands of rejections and set backs, with dedication and hard work we can create success regardless of what age we are.

If he can do it at the at the age of 75, Why can’t we!.

This success story of KFC remains a true inspiration for all who is discouraged by failures and rejections.

Will you ever be discouraged by failures and rejections? Let me know in the comments below!
I’m eager to know about you :-).

With that being said, That’s it for today.

See you again in the next blog post :-).

Peace ✌️.