Colonel Harland Sanders.
I am not making this up! KFC is Filling Potholes [click to read] as a service to the community. Advertising Age reports the chicken giant is filling potholes as a public service in Lousville Kentucky. My son sent this to me as we have been having an ongoing discussion of corporations building service to others into their business model.
It all started when he propped his canvas TOMS shoe on the dash as we drove to Dulles Airport. TOMS sells canvas shoes and for every pair you buy they give a pair to someone in an impoverished nation. We both thought that was a pretty cool business model.
But if you remember Colonel Sanders' beginnings its hard to imagine him having a lot of love for the highway department. He operated a motel and restaraunt that was bypassed by interstate 75. The business he received from travellers dried up overnight.
Sanders' took his famous chicken recipe and began selling it to other resaurants. He travelled many miles, often sleeping in his car, but he built a brand and travellers sought out his crispy chicken. The rest is history. His persistance gave us the famous chain we know today. His famous 'Colonel' outfit and goatee branded his chicken as a dependable meal in the best traditions of the South.
In a day when franchising and licensing were in their infancy the Colonel built a textbook example of how to do it.
Sanders was no stranger to adversity. He dropped out of school after the seventh grade. He ran away from home to escape abuse and became a steamboat driver, an insurance salesman and many other varied careers. He joined the Army at 16 by falsifying his age.
By age 40 he owned a gas station in Corbin Kentucky. He served chicken lunches out of the gas station too. Of course that led to his expanded hospitality business that thrived until the coming of the interstate.
The original home of Kentucky Fried Chicken in Corbin Kentucky.
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