Point of Sale KFC History - 4272Z021

Restaurant legend Colonel
Harland Sanders seated
upon an early model of the
Collectramatic® Pressure
Fryer. Beside him stands
Winston Shelton, founder of
Winston Industries.
Photo taken circa 1972.
Winston Industries’
involvement with
KFC began 1967.
Winston Shelton was
part owner of
Engineering
Prototype Services,
and did engineering
work there while
continuing to work
full-time as a
development
engineer for General
Electric. His
company was hired by Kentucky Fried Chicken to make temperature
measurements on chicken being fried in their home canners (known as
pots). As he worked on the KFC project,Winston became intrigued
by the problems faced by KFC in their kitchens.
He soon had an opportunity to meet Colonel Harland Sanders.
Winston’s company was working on a pressure fryer for Mies Filter
Products. Carl Mies brought the Colonel to the small shop to see it.
Reflecting on this meeting,Winston said;
It was then that I began to realize the Colonel’s genius. He was never
expressive in my technical terms, but he was a virtual storehouse of food and
business wisdom. He created the idea of a “secret recipe” chicken fried in a
“home canner,” and was franchising that idea through profit-oriented
entrepreneurs world-wide. I became fascinated with automating the pots. If
there ever was an engineer’s dream, this was it.
As he listened to the Colonel,Winston began to gain an understanding
of the needs of KFC franchisees, and to the challenges that are
characteristic of the fast food industry. It was critically important to
produce consistent high-quality fried chicken safely, using part-time
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employees who had minimal
training. A well-designed
pressure fryer must allow
servicing by store personnel,
rather than be dependent upon
a service network.
The “official” KFC cooker at
that time was the KFC 20-Head
Cooker, a huge machine that
cost $16,000. While it could
produce large quantities of chicken,
it did an inconsistent job of cooking.
Further, the pots required excessive
handling of hot shortening. The
general consensus at that time was
that mechanical filtering was
necessary. Winston thought a
sedimentation-type gravity filter
would do the job without filter
paper or filter aids, even while
cooking. He began designing a fryer
that addressed the need for more
consistent quality and less frequent
filtering. The collector-based fryer
was soon in the prototype stage.
Late in the development of the new
fryer, a crisis occurred. A bank
employee stole funds from the new
company. The bank, thinking
Winston part of the scam, called his
company’s loan. Facing the demise
of his fledgling company, he decided
to ask Col. Sanders for support.
As I told the Colonel of my plight, he
drew back after looking into a
prototype of an empty collector at the
bottom of the fryer and exclaimed
“My God,Winston, you’ve really got
something here.” I asked him later to
elaborate on his appreciation for what
he saw. He said “I could just see this
fryer in my stores, cooking chicken
round after round without having to
handle shortening, don’t you see. And
the crackling catcher is going to allow
us to make the finest gravy in the
world.” Subsequently, he met with the
bank, told them of the soundness of
the fryer, signed my note for $50,000,
and encouraged the bank to help me
get the fledgling Collectramatic idea
into production.
After months of testing, KFC
Canada approved the
Collectramatic fryer and began
replacing all the pots in their nearly
600 outlets. In the U.S., however,
the Collectramatic fryer was
meeting stiff opposition. But at the
Colonel’s encouragement, many U.S.
KFC franchisees were already buying Collectramatic fryers. Their
numbers grew so rapidly that the
KFC approval process was beginning
to have little meaning. Other
manufacturers also circumvented
the approval process and sold their
products directly to KFC
franchisees, creating a substantial
problem for KFC. Dick Beeson
(KFC President) and Winston
reached a gentlemen’s agreement
that Dick would approve the
Collectramatic fryer on the basis of
its equivalency to the pots as
established by a KFC-conducted
taste test. After the test, Dick
confirmed the tests established
taste equivalency, but said he wasn’t
going to approve the Collectramatic
fryer. He didn’t elaborate.
Later, at a regional franchisee
meeting, L.S. Hartzog (Hart
Biscuit Company) told the
Colonel and Winston that KFC
couldn’t approve the
Collectramatic fryer because of a
contract he had with John Y.
Brown. L.S. explained that his
company had developed the
20-head cooker. The contract
selling its design to KFC stipulated that KFC would pay Hartzog
$
300 for any other automatic fryer
sold to KFC franchisees. By this
time, Collectramatic fryer had
already sold thousands of fryers
into the KFC system, producing substantial tension between L.S. and
John Y. The stress mounted as franchisees continued buying the fryers
at a dizzying pace.
Later, as Heublein acquired KFC,
Barry Rowles (Heublein VP/KFC
President) told Winston that he was
buying Hart Biscuit Company and
expected to buy the “big cooker”
contract. Once that was done,
Barry orchestrated the approval of
the Collectramatic fryer.
Over the next three decades, as
KFC grew into a global powerhouse, over 26,000 Collectramatic
fryers were sold into its system.
Collectramatic, Inc. also grew. To
better reflect its expanded product
line, Collectramatic, Inc. was
renamed Winston Industries in
1984. It continues to research better ways to cook and hold food.
And it still holds true to the principles inspired by the Colonel, that
hard work and integrity aren’t the
easy way to do business, but they
are the right way.
Copyright 2005 Winston Industries LLC. All rights reserved. CVap and
Collectramatic are registered trademarks of Winston Industries LLC. The
CVap logo and Collectramatic logo are trademarks of Winston Industries LLC.
All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective
companies.
4272Z021 Rev. 01
rs
9-30-05