Man Who Brought KFC to England Says He Won’t Eat There
Published at
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(LONDON) — The man who brought restaurant chain KFC to Great Britain, and a former friend of “the Colonel,” says he “he would not go in there” these days.
Raymond Allen, 87, opened the United Kingdom’s first KFC in Preston, Lancashire decades ago. This week, however, he told London’s The Telegraph: “We have got one where I now live, but I would not go in there. I don’t use it and I think it is dreadful. The company has ruined the product.”
Allen said he became a friend of Harland “the Colonel” Sanders after they met at a conference in Chicago 50 years ago. Allen said he still has a hand-written copy of the original recipe that’s believed to have 11 herbs and spices, locked away in a bank. Saying he would never sell the recipe, Allen laments the state of the company now.
“Instead of staying with one good thing that was sellable, they have tried to compete with the other fast food units. They should have just stuck with the chicken,” Allen said.
Allen’s wife Shirley, 84, told The Telegraph, “We tried KFC only once about a year ago.”
“We had the traditional original chicken but there were so many different products it was difficult to know what to order. I don’t think we will go back,” she added.
The Allen family sold the business in 1973.
Allen recalled that the restaurant “was slow to catch on at first because people didn’t know what it was.”
“In the U.K. in those days chicken was something you ate for Sunday dinner,” he said. “It was way before its time. We had to give it away to passers-by initially.”
KFC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Follow @ABCNewsRadio
Copyright © 2015, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.