<Ul> <Li> view </Li> <Li> talk </Li> <Li> edit </Li> </Ul> <P> KFC, until 1991 known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, is an American fast food restaurant chain that specializes in fried chicken . Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, it is the world's second - largest restaurant chain (as measured by sales) after McDonald's, with almost 20,000 locations globally in 123 countries and territories as of December 2015 . The chain is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, a restaurant company that also owns the Pizza Hut and Taco Bell chains . </P> <P> KFC was founded by Colonel Harland Sanders, an entrepreneur who began selling fried chicken from his roadside restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky during the Great Depression . Sanders identified the potential of the restaurant franchising concept, and the first "Kentucky Fried Chicken" franchise opened in Utah in 1952 . KFC popularized chicken in the fast food industry, diversifying the market by challenging the established dominance of the hamburger . By branding himself as "Colonel Sanders", Harland became a prominent figure of American cultural history, and his image remains widely used in KFC advertising . However, the company's rapid expansion overwhelmed the aging Sanders and he sold it to a group of investors led by John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack C. Massey in 1964 . </P> <P> KFC was one of the first American fast food chains to expand internationally, opening outlets in Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Jamaica by the mid-1960s . Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it experienced mixed fortunes domestically, as it went through a series of changes in corporate ownership with little or no experience in the restaurant business . In the early 1970s, KFC was sold to the spirits distributor Heublein, which was taken over by the R.J. Reynolds food and tobacco conglomerate; that company sold the chain to PepsiCo . The chain continued to expand overseas, however, and in 1987, it became the first Western restaurant chain to open in China . It has since expanded rapidly in China, which is now the company's single largest market . PepsiCo spun off its restaurants division as Tricon Global Restaurants, which later changed its name to Yum! Brands . </P>

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