LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Col. Sander’s handwritten recipe for fried chicken was back in its Kentucky home today after five months in hiding while KFC upgraded security around its top corporate secret.
Nothing went afoul when the recipe was returned from an undisclosed location to KCF’s headquarters late Monday in a lockbox handcuffed to the wrist of a security consultant.
KFC President Roger Eaton was visibly relieved when the door to a new electronic safe was shut with the single sheet of yellowing paper stashed inside. “Mission accomplished,” he said.
“It was very nerve wracking,” Eaton said later of the recipe’s hiatus from a vault where it had been kept for decades. “I don’t want to be the only president who’s lost the recipe.”
KFC is a subsidiary of Louisville-based Yum Brands Inc., which also owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s and A&W All-American Food.
The recipe lays out a mix of 11 herbs and spices that coat the chain’s Original Recipe chicken, including exact amounts for each ingredient. It is written in pencil and signed by Harland Sanders.
The iconic recipe is now protected by an array of high-tech security gadgets, including motion detectors and cameras allowing guards to monitor the vault around the clock.
“It’s like an onion of security — many layers,” said security expert Bo Dietl, who brought the recipe back to the building.
Thick concrete blocks encapsulate a vault, situated near office cubicles, that is connected to a backup generator to keep the security system operating in times of power outages.
“I can guarantee you, once it’s in there, it will be safe,” Dietl assured Eaton.
Just how valuable is the recipe?
Thomas P. Hustad, professor of marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, said the recipe “goes to the core of the identity of the brand.” The recipe, along with the man who created it, conjure images for the chain that help set it apart in the minds of customers, he said.
“I would say that the heritage value is just as high for this secret recipe as the stories around the Coke formula,” Hustad said by phone today. “I guess I’d put the two of those at the top of the pyramid.”
Dietl said the security measures he installed replaced an “antiquated” system. For years, the recipe was kept in a filing cabinet equipped with two combination locks in the vault.
“The colonel could have used a pry bar to open that thing up,” Dietl said.
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