Sanders held a number of jobs in his early life, such as steam engine stoker, insurance salesman, and filling station operator.

Harland David Sanders was born on September 9, 1890, in a four-room house located 3 miles (5 km) east of Henryville, Indiana.

Sanders's mother was a devout Christian and strict parent, continually warning her children of "the evils of alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and whistling on Sundays".

[1] By the age of seven, in 1897, he was reportedly skilled with bread and vegetables, and improving with meat; the children foraged for food while their mother was away at work for days at a time.

[19] In 1924, by chance, he met the general manager of Standard Oil of Kentucky, who asked him to run a service station in Nicholasville.

As the United States entered World War II in December 1941, gas was rationed, and as the tourism dried up, Sanders was forced to close his Asheville motel.

[25] In 1952, Sanders franchised his secret recipe "Kentucky Fried Chicken" for the first time, to Pete Harman of South Salt Lake, Utah, the operator of one of that city's largest restaurants.

[27] For Harman, the addition of fried chicken was a way of differentiating his restaurant from competitors; in Utah, a product hailing from Kentucky was unique and evoked imagery of Southern hospitality.

[5] Sanders believed that his North Corbin restaurant would remain successful indefinitely; however, he sold it at age 65 after the new Interstate 75 reduced customer traffic.

[29][30][5] Left only with his savings and US$105 a month from Social Security (equivalent to $1,194 in 2023),[5] Sanders decided to begin to franchise his chicken concept in earnest, and traveled the US looking for suitable restaurants.

[31] Often sleeping in the back of his car, Sanders visited restaurants, offered to cook his chicken, and if workers liked it negotiated franchise rights.

[5] The franchise approach became highly successful; KFC was one of the first fast food chains to expand internationally, opening outlets in Canada and later in the UK, Australia, Mexico and Jamaica by the mid-1960s.

Sanders obtained a patent protecting his method of pressure frying chicken in 1962,[32] and trademarked the phrase "It's Finger Lickin' Good" in 1963.

As late as 1979 Sanders made surprise visits to KFC restaurants, and if the food disappointed him, he denounced it to the franchisee as "God-damned slop" or pushed it onto the floor.

[5][36] In 1973, Sanders sued Heublein Inc.—the then parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken—over the alleged misuse of his image in promoting products he had not helped develop.

[37][38] After reaching a settlement with Heublein, he sold the Colonel's Lady restaurant, and it has continued to operate, currently as the Claudia Sanders Dinner House.

In an article published by the Louisville Courier-Journal on October 8, 1975, he told journalist Dan Kauffman:[41] My God, that gravy is horrible.

They buy tap water for 15 to 20 cents a thousand gallons and then they mix it with flour and starch and end up with pure wallpaper paste.

... [The] crispy [fried chicken] recipe is nothing in the world but a damn fried doughball stuck on some chicken.After being recommissioned as a Kentucky colonel in 1950 by Governor Lawrence Wetherby, Sanders began to dress the part, growing a goatee and wearing a black frock coat (later switching to a white suit), a string tie, and referring to himself as "Colonel".

Brown Jr. remembered Sanders as "a brilliant man with a gourmet flair for food, a visionary and a great motivator, with the style of a showman and the discipline of a Vince Lombardi.

[51] Sanders was buried in his characteristic white suit and black western string tie in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.

[56] In May 2015, KFC brought the Colonel Sanders character back in new television advertisements, played by comedian Darrell Hammond.

[62] By July 2016, George Hamilton was playing Colonel Sanders, parlaying his famous tan into an advertisement for KFC's "extra crispy" chicken.

[64] In September 2016, comedian Rob Riggle played Sanders in an ad introducing a football team named "The Kentucky Buckets".

Singer Reba McEntire was named as the newest Sanders in January 2018, and made her debut in a commercial promoting the fast food chain's new "Smoky Mountain BBQ" chicken.

[77][78] A parody of conventional dating sims, the primary objective of the player is to develop a romantic relationship with a fictionalized version of KFC's founder Colonel Sanders, portrayed as an attractive classmate at a cooking school.

A statue of Colonel Sanders was thrown into a river and lost during a 1985 fan celebration, and (according to the legend) the "curse" has caused Japan's Hanshin Tigers to perform poorly since the incident.

"[82][83] In a 2018 episode of the soap opera General Hospital, Sanders is shown to know esoteric programming language Malbolge, which he uses to disarm a bomb intended to compel him to reveal his secret recipe.

Set in Victorian England, it centers on Lady Madeline Parker, who "must choose between a life of order and a man of passion", and featuring Sanders as the love interest, and ostensibly the writer.

[90][91] In 2010, the Oscar-winning animated short Logorama prominently featured a rotoscoped depiction of Colonel Sanders during the early fast-food restaurant scenes.