KFC Kentucky Fried Chicken(KFC) is afast food restaurantchain that specializes infried chickenand is headquartered inLouisville,Kentucky, United States. It is the world's second largest restaurant chain (as measured by sales) afterMcDonald's, with almost 20,000 locations globally in 123 countries and territories as of December 2015. The company is a subsidiary ofYum! Brands, a restaurant company that also owns thePizza HutandTaco Bell chains. KFC was founded byHarland Sanders, an entrepreneur who began selling fried chicken from his roadside restaurant inCorbin, Kentucky, during theGreat Depression. Sanders identified the potential of the restaurantfranchisingconcept, and the first "Kentucky Fried Chicken" franchise opened inUtahin 1952. KFC popularized chicken in the fast food industry, diversifying the market by challenging the established dominance of thehamburger. By branding himself as "Colonel Sanders", Harland became a prominent figure of American cultural history, and his image remains widely used in KFC advertising. However, the company's rapid expansion overwhelmed the aging Sanders, and, in 1964, he sold it to a group of investors led byJohn Y. Brown, Jr.andJack C. Massey. KFC was one of the first American fast food chains to expand internationally, opening outlets inCanada, theUnited Kingdom,Mexico, andJamaicaby the mid-1960s. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, KFC experienced mixed fortunes domestically, as it went through a series of changes in corporate ownership with little or no experience in the restaurant business. In the early 1970s, KFC was sold to thespiritsdistributorHeublein, who were taken over by the R.J. Reynoldsfood andtobaccoconglomerate, who sold the chain toPepsiCo. The chain
