KFC Chicken... being sold at other restaurants via a franchise

[retail_person_247]

Apparently back in the early days of KFC, the Colonel allowed people to sell his famous brand of fried chicken... at other independent restaurant chains.

The most prominent example that I could find of this is Kenny Kings, a former 'family restaurant' chain from Ohio (if I remember correctly), which sold 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' branded fried chicken at their own restaurants.

I also found evidence of smaller restaurant chains 'Lendy's' and 'Hill-Crest Drive-In' also selling Kentucky Fried Chicken branded food, despite them not being KFC restaurants.

Does anyone know when the company stopped doing this and/or what other restuarants did this?

Old ad for Kenny Kings, which features 'Colonel Sanders Recepie'

Photo source:
https://danielebrady.blogspot.com/2018/ ... en-in.html

[Groceteria]

Franchising the chicken as a product rather than a restaurant brand was the whole M.O. in the early years of KFC. The package consisted of the recipes, the fryers, some operating procedures, and the license to use the name. It was probably the late 60s/early 70s before it was served exclusively in KFC-branded restaurants. In many cases, even if the restaurant sold exclusively KFC, it still operated under another name as well (e.g. “Robbins Take-home serving Kentucky Fried Chicken“ in my hometown).

[jleyerle]

Exactly right---during the 50s they were selling recipes/cookers/branding to independent restaurants (including a lot of Big Boy operators--Shoney's, Marc's for instance) who integrated their offerings into their existing restaurants, and did take-out as a bit of a sideline. Harman's in Salt Lake City was the first of many nationwide. They were famous for those initial franchises which were "buy our 11 herbs and spice mix and our cookers and pay us a nickel a head" on a handshake.

During the early 60s (before the John Y Brown era) they were running into the limitations of that model, and came up with the cupola-topped take-out store. John Y Brown (mid 60s onward) blew out that model big time (plus moved it overseas). The take-out business model really began to be the "tail wagging the dog" starting in about 1969-70 and they stopped new franchises under the "menu expansion" model at about that time.

They gradually worked their way out of those old franchise agreements through the 70s, and likely about 79-'81 or so made those franchisees either put up new stand-alone current image/drive thru locations or give up the franchise (recognize that if the franchisee was adamant about -not- putting in a current image location they really didn't have much investment in the KFC business per-se (some signage and pressure fryers). . Marcus/Marc's (Milwaukee) converted over....Kenny Kings' last restaurant-based store closed in metro Cleveland in the mid-80s.

I started working for them as a mystery shopper in 1987, and there were by that time only a handful (maybe 75 of 2000) of take-out (cupola) or Chicago-front (what we called them--low-cost no dining room takeout locations) stores left in the corporate-owned KFC fleet (which was big cities at the time). At that point, some cities were entirely franchised, though (Seattle/Portland/St. Louis/Indianapolis/Cleveland/Milwaukee/Boston/Jacksonville), some were entirely corporate (Atlanta/Dallas/Houston/Phoenix/Las Vegas) and some were blended

[rich]

The last full-line Kenny Kings closed in 2011 and it had operated since 1970: https://www.cleveland.com/pdextra/2011/ ... e_fin.html
The store design was pretty standard for its time.

Our Kenny Kings had a large dining room and a vaguely colonial motif but had started out as King Cole's, a very similar kind of place. It was replaced with a standard KFC take-out, which was too small for the footprint, sometime in the 80s. That store was replaced with their current prototype.

Their steak burgers had fans as did the onion rings, not so much the fries. I've never been a a big fan of chicken or KFC.

[pseudo3d]

Chicago-front (what we called them--low-cost no dining room takeout locations) stores left in the corporate-owned KFC fleet (which was big cities at the time). At that point, some cities were entirely franchised, though (Seattle/Portland/St. Louis/Indianapolis/Cleveland/Milwaukee/Boston/Jacksonville), some were entirely corporate (Atlanta/Dallas/Houston/Phoenix/Las Vegas) and some were blended

There were a few odd KFC stores in Houston, sometimes very small locations that weren't drive-through. A number of Church's units in Houston flipped to KFC in the early 1980s for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, but most of those were closed by the mid-1990s.