By Susan Marschalk Green ~
Like many 20th-century American couples, my parents chose to relocate and raise their kids in a community that was quite a distance from their respective hometowns. Visiting the folks meant loading up the family station wagon once or twice a year to make the daylong trek from east central Florida to about halfway up the Georgia-South Carolina state line, where we had relatives living on either side of the border. Usually, we arrived first at my South Carolina grandmother’s house late in the evening.
Grandma wasn’t much of a cook and made no apologies about it. She welcomed my bleary-eyed siblings and me with a red-and-white bucket full of “finger-lickin’ good” delicacies from Kentucky Fried Chicken. (This was long before marketing gurus fell in love with acronyms, so no KFC for us.) To this day, my tastebuds tingle when my eyes light on that red-and-white pattern with a black-ink cameo of Colonel Sanders in the middle.
Across the Savannah River, my Georgia grandmother tended to favor Maryland Fried Chicken or Church’s Fried Chicken, later known as Church’s Texas Chicken. Each of these fast-food chains is still in business, offering its own take on one of the most beloved cuisines of the South, and each has its own fascinating story that dates to the mid-1900s. Additionally, although I never heard of them when I was a child, the boneless chicken sandwiches that were later branded Chick-fil-A got their start around this time, albeit not initially as fast food. I mention Chick-fil-A because, as a Georgia-born company, it’s the only one of the four early chicken chains that developed in a state universally recognized as the South.
In this vein, it’s also worth mentioning Georgia’s poultry geist of the to-go industry: a small chain of eateries known as the Krispy Chik that had locations along U.S. 301. This north-south highway was a big segment of our route from Daytona Beach, Fla., to Augusta, Ga., and the Krispy Chik crowing rooster logo marked our way in several towns. Sadly, this chain has largely faded away and now only haunts former patrons with memories of savory taste sensations and atrocious spelling.
Working women drive fast food’s popularity
By the time I came into the world, fast-food fried chicken was a staple of American life. It’s interesting to think that, once upon a time, it must have been a novelty for my grandmothers, who were born just this side of 1900, and even my parents, born in the 1930s. The rise in the number of women working outside the home during and after World War II undoubtedly played a role in the explosion of fast-food options in the 1950s and beyond.
Indeed, food service companies had already developed easy-to-prepare foods like Jell-O and marketed them mostly to busy housewives. Early KFC ads focused on feeding a family of four or six for a relatively low price, and a 1968 newspaper display ad boldly described the chain as “Wife-savers.” It went on to proclaim: “Colonel Sanders is a woman’s best friend. … For weary wives. For working women. All you do is pick it up.”
Not only did KFC help the “weary wife” skip messy meal preparation, but it also spared her the tedious chore of cleanup – which, for traditional fried chicken, includes disposal of messy cooking oil. This was a selling point that all of the early chicken-to-go chains had going for them. Beyond that, however, each chain had to find its own way to take roost in American hearts.
Without regard for pecking order, here’s a brief look at how four such pioneers carved out their niche.
Maryland Fried Chicken hatches in the Sunshine State
It’s debatable whether any recipe from a Mid-Atlantic state could be considered Southern fried chicken. But the reality is, contrary to what the name suggests, this rendition of a favorite Southern artery-clogger doesn’t come from Maryland. In fact, its creator, Albert Constantine, hailed from another Mid-Atlantic state that has never pretended to be part of the South: Delaware. But Constantine didn’t develop his brand of bird fare in his native land, ironically nicknamed the Blue Hen State.
It was after he moved to Florida, a state that has never let accuracy get in the way of a good marketing campaign, that he developed his signature recipe. The story goes that Constantine was operating a restaurant in the Orlando area in the late 1950s when Kentucky Fried Chicken came to town and quickly had customers lining up. Constantine decided to fry fowl, but with a different process he called “broasting,” or frying in a pressure cooker. He also went out of his way to top Colonel Sanders’ ballyhooed recipe of 11 herbs and spices by sprinkling his pullets with 21 – almost double the taste sensations for his customers to savor.
Constantine took pride in his broasted biddies, which he claimed were less greasy than traditional fried chicken. However, to cinch the popularity of his fare, he dubbed it Maryland Fried Chicken to appeal to the many transplants from Baltimore who flocked to Orlando when the Glenn L. Martin Co. (later known as Martin Marietta and Lockheed-Martin) opened a facility there.
Maryland Fried Chicken took off, becoming a chain that once boasted over 200 franchises. But after Constantine sold it in the 1970s, the network frayed, and now only about two dozen independent eateries remain. I’ve sampled the fare at locations in Augusta, Ga., and Plant City, Fla., both of which were founded in 1968. Definitely food worth crowing about!
Church’s Fried Chicken takes flight near the Alamo
Billed as the first fried chicken to go, the Church’s brand of oversized, crispy poultry pieces was initially sold in 1952 from a walk-up window across the street from the Alamo, the most visited tourist attraction in Texas. It’s easy to imagine all those sightseers getting a whiff of fried food that made their mouths water and then heading over to sample the Church’s recipe.
Church’s boasts a “big, bold flavor” that’s worthy of the Lone Star State and has since soared well beyond, spreading to over 800 locations in two dozen other states. Unlike KFC and Maryland Fried Chicken, there’s no braggadocio about herbs and spices. In a video on the corporate website, Laura Church, granddaughter of the chain’s founder, George Church, remembers Sunday gatherings at her grandparents’ house to test different batters, but no details are revealed. However, Church’s claims to have invented the first “spicy chicken” – created by squeezing a jalapeño pepper over batter-fried meat. The chain is also known for its made-from-scratch honey-butter biscuits and other sides that are prepared “in small batches” from fresh ingredients. Yummy.
Kentucky Fried Chicken remains king of the coop
It’s amazing how many fast-food innovators admire the KFC success story when discussing their own business strategies. Indeed, Kentucky Fried Chicken – invented by Indiana native Harland Sanders in 1939 for service in his Kentucky roadside gas station and café – has grown into an international phenomenon. The company, which hasn’t belonged to its founder since 1964, annually ranks in the top five fast-food chains in the world, and it’s the only fried chicken chain to do so.
Was it the hoopla over the secret recipe? The persona of the late Colonel Sanders, who was only an honorary “colonel” but went on the road in a white suit and black string bowtie that seemed fitting for a dignitary from a bygone era? Was it that iconic cardboard bucket of chicken emblazoned with the slogan “It’s finger-lickin’ good” – packaging that’s so representative of American culture that a bucket is part of the collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.?
At any rate, Kentucky Fried Chicken began its journey to fast-food royalty in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the chain’s first franchise opened in 1952. Today, according to the corporate website, KFC has 26,000-plus locations in about 145 countries.
Chick-fil-A packs a dilly of a sandwich
As with KFC, the Chick-fil-A recipe that would go on to fast-food stardom was first developed as a menu item for a sit-down restaurant. Founder Samuel Truett Cathy and his brother, Ben, opened a 24-hour diner, the Dwarf Grill, just outside Atlanta in 1946. After Ben Cathy died in a plane crash a few years later, his brother went on operating the diner and eventually opened a second location.
Truett Cathy developed a method of frying breaded boneless chicken breasts in a pressure cooker. This technique not only led to exceptionally moist meat, but it also proved to be faster than traditional frying. When the fried chicken sandwich became the most sought-after menu item at Cathy’s restaurant, he began taking steps to make it a star. The result? The first Chick-fil-A restaurant opened in an Atlanta mall in 1967. The chain later augmented its many mall locations with stand-alone eateries offering sandwiches to go.
Also taking a page from KFC, Chick-fil-A carefully guards its list of seasonings, but it’s impossible to disguise the flavor added by the two small slices of dill pickle that accompany every piece of breast meat sandwiched between two buttery buns. Like KFC, Chick-fil-A also developed a winning slogan: “Eat mor chickin,” uttered from the mouths of cartoon cows.
The Chick-fil-A brand remains anchored in Atlanta, but the flavor sensation has spread across the U.S., as evidenced by the nearly 3,000 locations in 47 states, the nation’s capital and Puerto Rico.
Is your mouth watering yet?
References
https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1464275
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/5-biggest-fast-food-chains-124101749.html
https://www.chick-fil-a.com/about/history
https://global.kfc.com/our-heritage/
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/kfc-vintage-menu-advertisements/
https://www.marylandfriedchicken.net/#google_vignette
https://www.churchs.com/our-story/
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-databook/2020/home.htm
https://www.thespruceeats.com/womens-impact-on-food-products-5115033
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