KFC Original Recipe

KFC's Original Recipe is the fried chicken seasoning blend developed by Colonel Harland Sanders in July 1940 at his Sanders Court and Cafe in North Corbin, Kentucky. Sanders described the blend of 11 herbs and spices as built around salt and pepper plus everyday ingredients that stand on everybody's shelf, and the recipe let him begin franchising his restaurant concept in 1952, which grew into KFC, the world's second-largest restaurant chain by sales. KFC keeps the recipe a trade secret rather than a patent, storing a signed copy in a vault at its Louisville headquarters alongside 11 vials of the herbs and spices, and splits its production between two companies, Griffith Laboratories and McCormick and Company, so that neither holds the complete formula.