Key Takeaways
- Colonel Sanders’ 1964 leather-bound planner, containing a handwritten 11-ingredient recipe once suspected to be KFC’s secret formula, sold at a Kentucky auction for $30,000 after years of speculation and a now-dropped KFC lawsuit.
- KFC ultimately ruled the list was likely a stuffing recipe, but the planner’s backstory—a basement discovery, corporate legal fight, and near–trade-secret scare—turned it into a mythic piece of fast-food history.
- Other items from Sanders’ carefully crafted persona and culinary legacy also drew big bids, including his clip-on black ribbon bow tie, an honorary Kentucky Colonel certificate, pressure cookers, and his 1966 pressure-frying patent that helped redefine fast food.
A handwritten recipe once feared to be KFC’s most closely guarded secret just sold for $30,000. The list was tucked inside Colonel Sanders’ personal 1964 planner—and contained exactly 11 ingredients, immediately raising one very expensive question: Had the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder written down the chain’s supposedly untouchable formula?
According to The Associated Press, the leather-bound planner topped a recent auction of Sanders’ belongings in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Along with the mystery recipe, its pages detail his relentless travel schedule as he crisscrossed the country building KFC into a national franchise.
“What a keepsake,” auctioneer Bill Menish said.
He was so fired up during the sale that he accidentally knocked over a camera.
But the planner’s value came from more than Sanders’ appointments. Around the turn of the century, the Settle family reportedly discovered the book in the basement of his former home.
On one page was a handwritten list of 11 ingredients with precise measurements—the same number long associated with KFC’s famous blend of herbs and spices. When the family contacted the company about the discovery, KFC Corporation sued to keep the list from becoming public.
The legal drama eventually ended without the Colonel’s secret escaping. After examining the planner, KFC determined that its contents did not match the chicken recipe and dropped the lawsuit. The company said Sanders had probably written down a stuffing recipe instead.
Still, the scare gave the book a mythology of its own: a basement discovery, a corporate legal battle and a potential fast-food bombshell hiding in plain sight.
The planner was not the only piece of Sanders’ carefully built image to draw serious money. His clip-on black ribbon bow tie—the style still featured in KFC’s logo—sold for $8,000.
“Not a lot of people know; he did wear clip-ons,” auctioneer Jonathan Klunk said.
A 1955 certificate naming Sanders an honorary Kentucky Colonel brought another $23,000. “He didn’t dress like that before he was starting to build Kentucky Fried Chicken,” Menish said. “He adopted the colonel: the clothes, the bow tie, the glasses, the goatee.”
Menish called him a “marketing genius” and “the original celebrity chef.”
Other lots captured the machinery behind the character. Sanders’ pressure cookers, cutlery, a bust sculpted by his daughter and his 1966 patent for producing fried chicken under pressure also sold. His pressure-frying process helped reshape fast food by reducing cooking time without sacrificing crisp breading or juicy meat.
Sanders sold KFC to investors in 1964 but remained its unmistakable public face until his death in 1980. He had established the Shelbyville property as the company’s first headquarters in the late 1950s, then sold it in 1974 to Tommy and Cherry Settle.
