Colonel Sanders

Harland David Sanders worked as a steam engine stoker, insurance salesman, and filling station operator before he started selling fried chicken from his roadside restaurant in North Corbin, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. There he developed his secret recipe and a patented pressure-fryer method. Seeing the franchise model's potential, he opened the first KFC franchise in South Salt Lake, Utah, in 1952, then devoted himself to spreading it across the country after his original restaurant closed. The expansion became too much: at 73, in 1964, he sold the company to investors for $2 million, keeping Canadian operations and becoming a salaried brand ambassador. In his later years he turned caustic about what KFC had become, calling the gravy "God-damned slop" and lamenting the cost-cutting that he said gutted the quality he'd built.