How KFC Really Started (It Wasn't 1,009 Rejections)

In 1956, a 66-year-old man sold his restaurant at auction for less than half of what he'd been offered three years earlier. A new interstate was going to bypass his town. Eight years later, he sold the business he built on his recipe for $2 million. This is the real story of Colonel Sanders and KFC: thirty years of false starts, a gas station in Corbin, Kentucky, a handshake deal worth a nickel a chicken — and why the most famous parts of KFC, the name, the bucket and the slogan, weren't his ideas at all. Plus: where the "rejected 1,009 times" story actually comes from. Chapters 0:00 Losing his restaurant at 66 1:06 Cooking at age seven 1:23 Thirty years of false starts 2:11 A gas station in Corbin, Kentucky 2:46 The Colonel who was never a colonel 3:11 The pressure cooker 3:58 The first franchise 4:27 The highway 4:57 Back on the road at 66 5:27 The 1,009 rejections myth 5:59 A nickel a chicken 6:23 What the franchisees invented 7:01 Dave Thomas and Wendy's 7:14 The Colonel becomes the brand 7:32 The $2 million sale 8:12 The Colonel vs. KFC 8:40 KFC today 9:00 3 lessons for builders Sources KFC Corporation and Heublein annual reports, 1966–1981: https://archive.org/details/kfcheuble... Smithsonian Magazine, "How Colonel Sanders Made Kentucky Fried Chicken an American Success Story": https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smiths... Kentucky Fried Chicken of Bowling Green, Inc. v. Sanders, Kentucky Supreme Court, 1978 (the "wallpaper paste" quote): https://static.case.law/sw2d/563/case... Yum! Brands 2025 annual report (Form 10-K): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da... Deseret News, "50 years of finger-lickin' chicken" (2002): https://www.deseret.com/2002/7/30/196... Snopes, Colonel Sanders fact check: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/col... Josh Ozersky, "Colonel Sanders and the American Dream" (2012) Sketch to Scale tells the real stories behind the world's biggest companies, drawn by hand, one marker stroke at a time. Subscribe for the next one. #KFC #ColonelSanders #BusinessStory