Pete Harman became KFC’s first franchisee when he opened a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1952. Harman was already an established restaurant operator when he met Colonel Harland Sanders.
Harman helped turn Sanders’s cooking method into a repeatable restaurant business. He introduced the use of a bucket for serving fried chicken, an idea that became strongly associated with the KFC brand.
Harland Sanders supplied the recipe and operating knowledge, but Harman was the first operator to run a restaurant under the emerging Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise arrangement. This makes Harman different from Sanders, who founded and promoted the concept.
KFC later expanded internationally through franchisees and company development. The Salt Lake City restaurant is therefore an important milestone in the chain’s transition from one Kentucky operation into a global franchise system.