In the following decades, Sanders worked as a railroad fireman, became a lawyer and practiced law, operated a steamboat on the Ohio River, sold insurance, and, in 1930, finally settled down to run a service station in Corbin, Kentucky. Just running a service station was, of course, not enough for the energetic Sanders, and soon he was putting his cooking skills to use again, providing meals for travelers, first in his own dining room and eventually in a restaurant across the road. Over the next few years he concentrated on perfecting his special recipe for fried chicken, devising the "eleven herbs and spices" of the "secret recipe" still zealously guarded by KFC. Sanders's chicken became so popular that in 1935 he was made a Kentucky Colonel in recognition of his contribution to the state's cuisine.
In 1950, however, a new highway bypassing the town of Corbin effectively put Sanders out of business, and his sole income became his $105 per month Social Security checks. Undaunted, two years later, at age sixty-two, Sanders hit the road with a plan to franchise his fried chicken, for a nickel for each chicken sold, to restaurants across the United States. Amazingly, the plan worked, and by 1964 the Colonel's chicken was being sold in more than six hundred restaurants. At age seventy-four, Sanders sold his business for $2 million and became the official spokesman for Kentucky Fried Chicken. By 1974, he was ranked as the second-most recognized celebrity in the world. Colonel Sanders died in 1980 at the age of ninety from leukemia, but his smiling image still graces KFC's packaging.