Nothing to do with Pepsi… he lambasted the folks he sold it to..
He sold it in 1964. Pepsi didn’t but it until after he was dead.
Yes it was John Y. Brown that Sanders sold KFC to. Husband of Phyllis George and later Governor of Kentucky. Brown then sold to a beverage distributor Hublien (sp) who sold it to RJ Reynolds Tobacco who sold it to Pepsi.
In further reading, I found that in 1964, Harland Sanders sold KFC to a group of investors led by John Y. Brown and Jack C. Massey for $2 million.
In 1971, Brown sold KFC to Heublein, a food packaging and drinks company, for $285 million. The new owners changed the recipe since they felt that the old recipe was expensive and hard to make.
They replaced it with a cheaper recipe that anyone could learn. Sanders sued the new owners for misusing his name in selling products he didn’t develop. The settlement gave him $1 million.
Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds, acquired Heublein for $1.3 billion in 1982 and sold KFC to PepsiCo in 1986 for $850 million.
In 1997, PepsiCo spun off its restaurant chain which included KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut to Tricon Global restaurant Inc. The new company rebranded itself as Yum! Brands in May 2002.
Along that chain of owner-ships, the KFC chicken changed to the flavorless, bland crap we eat today. We don’t know if any of the original recipe is being used.
However, I ate the original Sanders chicken cooked in the pressure cooker. What we have today is what I call cheap. Cheap! Cheap!