The KFC restaurant on the corner of Ulster and Foxhall avenues has been serving customers for 40 years, making it one of Kingston”™s most enduring businesses. It”™s also a historic landmark of sorts: owner Darlene Pfeiffer was the first woman in the city to operate a franchise.
Pfeiffer, dressed in an elegant, fitted dark-purple suit, enters the restaurant and stops in front of a poster promoting the KFC Corp.”™s $20,000 college scholarship program. It”™s a project she”™s been personally involved in, having just returned from Iowa where she helped select 52 winners from thousands of applicants. Besides being top students, they are chosen on the basis of their volunteerism, leadership skills and financial need. The company, which started the program two years ago, has raised $1 million to enable 100 students to get scholarships next year. Pfeiffer herself donated $20,000, with the stipulation that two winners would be selected from Ulster and Dutchess counties.
When Pfeiffer started the business in 1967, she faced obstacles that are hard to imagine today. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, she was a TWA flight attendant before being forced to quit after she got married (stewardesses weren”™t allowed to be wed). After she and her husband moved to the Hudson Valley, Pfeiffer, who was searching for something to do, recalled the success of the six KFCs in Columbus and got the idea of starting one here. She called Columbus KFC franchisee owner Dave Thomas ”” he later founded Wendy”™s ”” to find out what was involved.
“He said, ”˜It”™s the sweetest business. It”™s really simple. You just have to keep track of the pieces.”™ I thought, I can count. I went to Kentucky and got the rights for several shops.”
The bank wouldn”™t give her a loan until her husband co-signed, on the grounds that if she was the sole signer, she might get pregnant and default on the loan. Everything after that was a piece of cake.
“Kingston had a lot of IBMers back then who had lived elsewhere and knew the brand. Others remembered seeing the colonel on ”˜What”™s My Line?”™” Pfeiffer has fond memories of Col. Harland Sanders, who once visited Kingston. “If he saw a child or anybody, he always stopped to talk to them,” she said. “He stood out.”
Eventually, she expanded the business to nine locations; today, she has two, the Kingston store and one in Poughkeepsie. The menu has become more complex but still features the original recipe ”” chicken pressure-cooked 12 minutes, served with cole slaw, a biscuit and mashed potatoes and gravy. “Our chicken is fresh, never frozen. We bread it in the store,” Pfeiffer said.
KFC also eliminated all trans fats several months ago: her franchisee is a member of the New York City KFC co-op, which had to comply with the Big Apple”™s ban of the unhealthy oil, and hence is one of the first KFC locations to be trans-fat-free.
Â
The KFC has 18 employees and churns out an average of 1,600 to 1,700 pieces of chicken a day. Pfeiffer said many people have worked for years at the store, including 31-year-old manager Joe Farley, who started at age 16.
“It”™s not being in the chicken business, it”™s being in the people business,” she said. “We”™re working with young people and watching them grow. We look at each other as a family.”
Â
Â
Â
Â
