KFC
American fast food restaurant chain specializing in fried chicken
KFC Corporation, trading as KFC (an abbreviation of Kentucky Fried Chicken), is an American multinational fast food restaurant chain specializing in Southern fried chicken and chicken sandwiches. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, it is the world's second-largest restaurant chain (as measured by sales) after McDonald's, with over 31,980 locations globally in 150 countries, as of September 2025. The chain is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, a restaurant company that also owns the Taco Bell chain.
KFC was founded by Colonel Harland Sanders (1890–1980), an entrepreneur who began selling fried chicken from his roadside restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. Sanders identified the potential of the restaurant-franchising concept, and the first "Kentucky Fried Chicken" franchise opened in South Salt Lake, Utah, in 1952. KFC popularized chicken in the fast-food industry, diversifying the market by challenging the established dominance of the hamburger. By branding himself as "Colonel Sanders", Harland became a prominent figure of American cultural history, and his image remains widely used in KFC advertising to this day. However, the company's rapid expansion overwhelmed the aging Sanders, and he sold it to a group of investors led by John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack C. Massey in 1964.
The public source identifies “KFC” as american fast food restaurant chain specializing in fried chicken. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around American, fast and food.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q524757. VIAF identifies the subject as 154723534. The Library of Congress control number is n88079677. Authority coordinates are 38.198, -85.696. 2 of 122 selected statements include explicit references; 119 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 1890, 1980 and 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “KFC” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.