Historical note

[jwgh]

This is something my father told me about when I was a kid, and for some reason I've always remembered it. But recently I tried to verify it on the web and was unable to. However, I talked to my father again last week and asked him about it and he confirmed that I didn't make it up, so here it is.

According to my father, at one point, some years after he sold Kentucky Fried Chicken, Colonel Sanders was interviewed on some teevee show. In this interview, he revealed that he disapproved of the way KFC's new owners were managing the restaurants and called one of the new products "nothing but a damn greasy doughball".

Not long after that, he was committed to a rest home.

With a bit of luck, now if someone else tries to find information about this (by, say, searching for "damn greasy doughball" on Google) they will at least be able to determine that someone else remembered the interview.

HISTORICAL NOTE ENDS.

Comments

[urbeatle.livejournal.com]

I don't remember if he said "damned greasy doughball", but William Poundstone's Big Secrets mentions that the Colonel didn't approve of the chicken being made under his name once he sold the franchise. he swore that they altered the "11 secret herbs and spices", among other things.

[jwgh]

At some point I read something about the history of KFC -- I thought it was in the Straight Dope, but I can't find it there so it was probably some similar column -- and I was hoping that it would have some information about Colonel Sanders's later history, but it didn't. Waah!

[manfire.livejournal.com]

I vaguely remember hearing something about that. I thought it was either in Big Secrets or in Dave's Way: A New Approach To Old-Fashioned Success, the autobiography (and business-tips book) of Dave Thomas, who before founding Wendy's in the late '60s was a big honcho at KFC and a friend of the Colonel's. I do remember reading in Dave's Way that the Colonel never forgave Dave for adopting a preparation process wherein the just-cooked chicken was dumped into a wire basket so the oil could drain off. (KFC's chicken is not fried in the usual sense, but rather it is pressure-cooked in oil.) The Colonel apparently wanted KFC to stick with his old method of laboriously ladling off the oil, and he apparently had this notion that dumping the chicken in a wire basket would bruise it somehow and destroy its high quality.

In Dave's Way, Dave also takes credit for the idea of serving chicken in a bucket, as well as for the famous tilted rotating bucket-shaped KFC sign of yore. Apparently, the Colonel's original Kentucky Fried Chicken business consisted of him driving around to regular sit-down restaurants all over creation and selling them his recipe as well as the rights to use the phrase "Kentucky Fried Chicken" in their menus. One of the restaurants that began serving Kentucky Fried Chicken was Hobby House, a small local Ohio chain that Dave managed. Dave and the Colonel eventually got the idea of starting the first standalone Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, which they opened in Ohio somewhere near where Dave lived, and this gave Dave the opportunity to come up with all these innovations. The red-and-white-striped bucket was pure serendipity, as that was the only color scheme of paper bucket available at the paint store where they went to get the buckets when Dave first came up with the idea of serving chicken in a bucket. I might be getting these facts slightly off because it was several years ago that I read the book, but I think I've got the basics right. At least, to the extent that we can rely on Dave's extremely Dave-centric version of the tale of KFC.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

I'm sure he'd approve even less of how his likeness was used in commercials, in three separate incarnations, after his death.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

Let us not forget the dancing, rapping, animated version that was 'down with the homies' and used street lingo.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

...while plugging Pokemon products!

[simon44.livejournal.com]

How about Fast Food Nation? I'm in the middle of that now and it has, so far, lots of history of the rancor among fast food chain owners & founders.