In the early 1950s he closed the restaurant and decided to sell his recipe to other businesses. The first official Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant didn't open until August 1952 - by 1964 there were more than 600 KFCs in North America. That year Sanders sold the company for $2 millon, but he continued to work as KFC's public spokesman and visited restaurants all over the world. He travelled 250,000 miles every year until he died in 1980, aged 90. Six years later PepsiCo bought KFC for $840 million.
There are now KFC restaurants in more than 80 countries and they sell 2.5 billion chicken dinners every year and the recipe is still a secret!