[MUSIC PLAYING] "(SINGING) It's H.
Salt Fish and Chips. Fish, fresh. Lightly battered, deep fried. Potatoes, peeled. Chip, deep fried. Salt and vinegar. Makes my mouth water. Batter, perfect. Peanut oil's 350 degrees. Texture, crispy. Bite into it and, oh, so good. Anything that's not
good for you is good. Two pieces of fish and chips. And don't forget
the malt vinegar. Making me hungry. Oh, fish and chips. The two notes that sound
beautiful together. Harmony. So when you do it like that,
things can be exciting. Who knows? May have an orgasm,
if you do it right." "This kindly, mild-mannered
Englishman is Haddon Salt." "I always felt that
I was an American. In England, there was
the bloody weather, bloody government. This is wrong. You're always so negative. The thing I love
about America is that this is the home of the
power of positive thinking. The American dream
is opportunity for self-employment. Otherwise, you're fulfilling
somebody else's dream. Of course, I was in England
during World War II. So I remember that
quite vividly. Towards the end of the war,
my father got into business. And that was when
I learned about how to cook fish and chips." "He took to frying
like a duck to water. This is my family's
original fish and chip shop. That's my father,
a master fryer." "He worked in the coal mines,
the most lowly background that you can have in England." "I discovered early that my
father's business flourished because he worked hard and
paid great attention to —" "Quality." "That's all we thought
about was work. That's all we did. We had this big
navy base near us. And we had a line-up of people
from the day we opened." "Today is Victory
in Europe Day." "This was the moment
we'd all be waiting for." "I remembered the
day that the war ended, May the 8th,
lives just changed. Your dreams started
really opening up. They were closing
the base down. And they said, we're
gonna miss you, because this is the only
English food that we like. English food did —
had a bad reputation." "Hey, you know what
you ought to do?" "No. What do you think
I ought to do? And he said —" "You ought to sell these
fish and chips in the States, that's what you ought to do." "Name, please." "Salt. Salt, what kind
of name is that?" "Aren't you glad
they let him in?" "We found a piece of
property in Sausalito. That was our first
shop, H. Salt Esquire. When you use your name, you're
putting your name behind it. In other words,
your reputation. We were selling the romance
of England in our shop. Wooden paneling and pictures
of the tube stations in London. People loved it. I had no idea about
franchising in those days. But I knew that I was gonna
do something like that." "He's accepted a duel with
the American hamburger. He is luring Americans
away from hamburgers to authentic English
fish and chips, through his family's
secret recipe." "When we had the
professional advertising, the line must have been
a quarter of a mile long. It was amazing, opening day. From then on, we just flew. We went down to Los Angeles. It just spread so quickly. It's contagious. And so we're opening
stores everywhere. Eventually, wound up with 500. My name was known
everywhere in the country. They'd say, what's your name? Haddon Salt. Are
you really H. Salt? We were growing so
quickly that I realized how many components it would
take to make this thing work. But only if you do it right. And that's the hard
part, getting people to do it right." "This was the first
service station that I had. But I don't care if I had
truck drivers sitting down there and here come a doctor,
I didn't know who he was. I thought everybody could
eat at the same table. I didn't know anything,
only to be friendly. So that was my
first restaurant." "I admired K.F.C. as the
leading food company. They were ahead of
McDonald's in those days. When they went public,
every franchisee became multimillionaires. Within a year, the company
was worth $500 million from $2 million. Now, they've got
all this money. So H. Salt comes along. I think, ah ha. Now, I'd been coached before
I went in this meeting, because I'm not used
to this kind of stuff. So they said, well,
what do you think you want for your company? I said, well, why don't we
self for 25 times earnings. All their faces went pale. So one of the guys
just jumped up. He says, give me
$5 million dollars. He said, I'll blow this guy
off the face of the earth. And I said, and I want to
help you buy my company, if you want to buy it. I said, but you
can't come in here and scare me into
selling my company, because it ain't gonna work. End of conversation. They all left, came back two
hours later, made the deal. 25 times earnings. $12.5 million in K.F.C. stock. Then, it proceeded to go up. That was the first time that
I knew how many zeros there was in a million dollars. They saw me as the
next Colonel Sanders. All my life, everything
I touched turned to gold. Then, suddenly, it
went the other way. They weren't selling chicken. They were selling
Colonel Sanders. They weren't selling fish. They were selling me. They didn't really
grasp what the idea was. I was trying to put middle-class people into business, give them the joy
of self-employment. They missed that. They worked on me
big time, but they didn't work on the company. They started to
lower the standards, the quality of the fish. And so the volumes of the
restaurants went down. And people stopped
buying franchises. So that was the end of it. Didn't grow anymore. Well, there's still quite
a few in Los Angeles, but they're self-managed. They're not an authentic
English fish and chip shop anymore. K.F.C. just let them go. You're risking your reputation
when you put your name behind something. You can't walk away
from your name. So — I don't know. I don't feel responsible. I don't feel — I don't feel guilty
or responsible. I did sell out. You might say, do
you wish you hadn't? I don't know. But you know, life
moves forward. You have to keep
moving forward." [SINGING] "(SINGING) It's H.
Salt Fish and Chips."
Oh neat I thought this was going to be how kfc screwed him, but no just sold his company for loads of money and then kfc mismanaged it into the ground. Though now I want to know how long John silvers fits in when did they buy that. I may google it now.