Kentucky Fried Stunt

My Google alert threw something interesting up this morning: KFC officials used an armored car to move a scrap of paper from one secure location to another on September 9 th, guarded by a former New York police detective.

Why? Because on it, Col. Harland Sanders had scribbled his original recipe for quick-to-prepare chicken, a trade secret so heavily guarded that supposedly only three KFC executives have access to it at any one time, two that know the recipe and one who keeps the keys to the safe. They’re not allowed to travel on the same plane, car or train together in case the secret is lost in some calamitous accident or chicken-hungry bandits kidnap and torture the secrets out of them.

Why did KFC decide to move the recipe now? According to the PR pixies at the company, it was necessary, after 68 years, to upgrade the protocols and safety procedures surrounding the recipe. This is possible, though it seems likelier that it’s simply a publicity scam, a chance to crow about their chicken and get the fast food-buying public into a flap about the product.

I have my own theory, based on their suggestion – I think that the brand were more concerned that the true salt and preservative content of the recipe doesn’t get into enemy hands and that this handy publicity scam, which sees the recipe away from its original home, location and return time unknown, allows a period of grace whilst the key-holding executive, who was surely in cahoots with Ronald Macdonald, is eased out of his position…