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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
National
Jess Molyneux

Liverpool's first KFC that sold chicken and chips for 47p

It's hard to believe it now - but decades ago fast food was an alien concept to what we now know of our Liverpool high streets.

It wasn't until the 1950s that British customers tried their first Wimpy burger and before McDonald's and Burger King chains followed in the 1970s, we got our first taste of American phenomenon KFC.

Predating the arrival of a number of fast food chains that are popular today, Kentucky Fried Chicken, the brainchild of Colonel Sanders, first arrived in the UK in 1965. The inaugural KFC restaurant opened in Preston in May 1965, with a cardboard cut-out of Colonel Sanders in the shop window, ready to welcome budding fried chicken fans, Lancs Live previously reported.

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In Liverpool, it all started in 1965 with a store opening on County Road in Walton - which at the time was one of only three KFC's in the country. By 1975, KFC also had three more stores in Liverpool, one on Aigburth Road, one on Stanley Road in Bootle and the other on High Street in Wavertree.

On June 3, 1975, a Liverpool ECHO advertising feature reported how the County Road KFC was celebrating a decade in business. To mark the occasion, a large cake was prepared, decorated with an icing figurehead of Colonel Harland Sanders.

A Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. January 11, 1981 (Mirrorpix)

One image, courtesy of our archives Mirrorpix, shows Arthur hill, manager of the site with a giant bucket of chicken inside the store. The image, which was rediscovered by Matt McHugh-Iddon and shared to his Twitter account, offers a glimpse inside the shop, the menu prices at the time and what the branded logo looked like in 1975.

Mr Hill took control of the shop eight years prior and said the business boomed because of the increasing cost of other meat and partly because of the quality of the product combined with a pleasant and efficient service. And like many others, he had no idea what the recipe is.

Do you remember the early days of KFC? Let us know in the comments section below.

My Hill said: "Kentucky Fried Chicken is a little more expensive than chicken cooked in other ways. But we go in for quality not quantity.

"I have pondered over what is in it. But to be honest I haven't really bothered to try and discover the secret. I suppose it is a safeguard against anyone else using it."

On advert, also published in the feature, promoted Kentucky Katering, which supplied special occasions, such as weddings, picnics, reunions, receptions, jamborees, anniversaries and parties with Kentucky Fried Chicken. Catering from 50 to 500 people, customers could be set up with buffet style meals and have the mess cleaned up afterwards.

A KFC menu for a Liverpool ECHO advertising feature from 1975 (Liverpool ECHO/British Newspaper Archive)

In 1975, the 'take home' packs menu sold two piece boxes for 39p, chicken and chips for 47p, a chicken dinner option for 59p, a four-piece box for 72p, a six-piece box for £1.05, an eight-piece box for £1.40 and a party bucket for £3.40. Side dishes also included chips for 10p, large barbeque beans and large coleslaw for 17p each and a large gravy for 9p.

In the article, a KFC spokesman also said: "Recently there has been a search by the British people for something slightly different to take home than fish and chips. There is a fish and chip shop every mile or two in most towns, but not so with Kentucky Fried Chicken.

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"And as people expand their interest in this way, so firms have to move to meet this demand. It is quite definitely interesting and very real area to expand in."

Today, there are many KFC branches across Merseyside, serving traditional recipe chicken. But many will have fond memories of the first KFC store in Liverpool in its infancy - from what it looked like to the menu and prices it offered.

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