John Y. Brown invented carryout chicken, made Ky. the ‘Silicon Valley’ of restaurants
Former Kentucky Gov. John Y. Brown, who died Nov. 22 at age 88, was a pioneer of the fast-food restaurant industry.
Before going into politics, Brown made a fortune in the restaurant business, primarily from the sale of Kentucky Fried Chicken, which was the largest fast-food chain in the world at the time. Brown used that fortune to run for governor in 1979.
According to a 2014 Herald-Leader article on the 50th anniversary of the founding of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Brown met Colonel Harland Sanders after Sanders asked him to be his lawyer. Brown, 28 at the time, took six months to call Sanders back.
“The Colonel took me upstairs and showed me the checks — $150, $180, $200, some were $300 — he was getting every month,” Brown said.
The Colonel had sold licenses — they weren’t called franchises back then — to 600 restaurants to sell his chicken. By 1964, the Colonel was feeling overwhelmed with the work and bored, Brown said. He wanted to sell.
How John Y. Brown made a deal with Colonel Sanders, bought KFC
And after the Colonel served Brown some of his chicken, pressured-fried to keep grease out and the juices in, Brown was sold, too.
“I had never seen such a beautiful, potential business,” Brown said.
The deal was signed in Salt Lake City because the Colonel wanted the approval of Pete Harman, a restaurant owner who bought the first license from the Colonel in 1952.
“If Pete approved, we had a deal,” Brown said.
Brown went back to his hotel room and wrote a contract on a yellow legal pad.
“At 6 a.m., we met downstairs for breakfast. The Colonel signed. I gave him a check for $50,000,” Brown said.
Jack Massey, a retired venture capitalist and entrepreneur from Nashville, put up most of the $50,000 and became a silent partner. He and Brown agreed to pay Sanders $2 million over six years for the business, which included the secret recipe.
John Y. Brown pioneered takeout fried chicken
Over the next few years Brown built it into the world’s largest fast-food chain before selling in 1971 for $284 million.
The company did not have an advertising budget, so to promote Kentucky Fried Chicken, Brown spent the first year getting Sanders on television. The Colonel appeared on popular shows such as “I’ve Got a Secret” and “What’s My Line?” As a publicity stunt on “The Johnny Carson Show,” Sanders pushed $2 million in cash out on stage in a plastic cage, accompanied by a cadre of security guards.
“Every time we got him on television, franchise sales jumped 10 percent or more,” Brown said. “He was a great showman.”
Brown noticed that the figures for many restaurants showed 30 to 40 percent of sales came from chicken, so he came up with the idea to sell just the chicken and serve it as carryout, an entirely new concept.
Other restaurants served take-out but nobody served just one thing. Brown re-wrote the franchise agreement, converting the original 600 restaurants just to carryout Kentucky Fried Chicken and gradually added the other elements that made the image: The bucket, the red and white color scheme and the slogan, “Finger-lickin’ good.”
“Kentucky Fried Chicken created a whole new section of fast food for chicken,” Brown said. “It sold chicken dinners to take home and put on the family dinner table. No other restaurant chain was doing that.”
Taking Kentucky Fried Chicken public and selling out
In 1966, the chain went public, which made many employees rich. Brown began hiring corporate managers but didn’t like the business any more.
In 1971, he sold KFC to Heublein Inc for $285 million. And he went on to own sports franchises, including the Boston Celtics.
In 1979, Brown married former Miss America and CBS sportscaster Phyllis George. They had two children and Brown ran for governor of Kentucky. He served as governor from December 1979 to December 1983.
John Y. Brown’s influence on Kentucky restaurant chains
His influence on Kentucky’s restaurant business landscape was far-reaching: Because of KFC’s success, many restaurant companies have been headquartered in the state, including YUM, now KFC’s corporate parent, in Louisville.
According to 1999 Herald-Leader story, Chi-Chi’s and Rally’s were both founded in Kentucky by former KFC executives under Brown, but the chains no longer have their headquarters in the state. Former KFC-er Kent Taylor started Kentucky-based Texas Roadhouse.
Louisville native James A. Patterson was a Jerry’s franchisee for Lexington’s Jerrico Inc. before founding Long John Silver’s, which he sold to Jerrico in 1975. A year later, he joined KFC executive Shelly Frank in developing Chi-Chi’s. Later Patterson founded Rally’s.
John Cranor, then chief executive officer of Long John Silver’s and a former Kentucky Fried Chicken executive, once called Kentucky the “Silicon Valley” of food.
“It takes one entrepreneurial visionary to get the process started,” Cranor said in 1999.
“We were fortunate in Kentucky to have more than our share of entrepreneurial visionaries,” Cranor said.
John Y. Brown’s business life after Kentucky governorship
After politics, Brown returned to the restaurant business, owning part or all of a string of restaurants (many of which he founded) including Lum’s, Ollie’s Trolley, Buckhead Mountain Grill, Roadhouse Grill, Kenny Rogers Roasters, H. Salt Fish & Chips and several steak houses, including one named for former University of Louisville football coach Howard Schnellenberger called Coach Schnellenberger’s The Original Steakhouse & Sports Theatre.
Brown also helped Phyllis George launch the Chicken By George line for grocery stores, which became part of Hormel.
He launched another chain with actress Suzanne Somers, a meal prep store called Suzanne’s Kitchen, with the first location in Tates Creek Center in Lexington. But it failed after less than a year and Brown and Somers were sued by an investor. The case was dismissed.
In later years, Brown began working with Nicholasville-based global animal nutrition company Alltech after founder Pearse Lyons asked him to speak at the company’s annual meeting.
In 2009, Harvard Business School honored Brown as one of the top American business leaders in the 20th century. He was included with such business heavyweights as Ray Kroc, who started McDonald’s, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, Walt Disney and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
On receiving the award, Brown quipped, “I’m relevant again.”
This story was originally published November 22, 2022 at 3:37 PM.
