A piece of fast food history is up for auction in Shelbyville, Kentucky.
Blackwood Hall, the longtime home of KFC founder Colonel Harland Sanders and his wife, Claudia Sanders, is up for sealed-bid auction by The Menish Group until July 31. The home is listed alongside Claudia Sanders Dinner House, a restaurant the couple operated on the property.
The couple moved to Blackwood Hall in 1959, seven years after Colonel Sanders began franchising his fried-chicken recipe, and made the property KFC’s headquarters. Sanders sold KFC in 1964, but the couple remained in the restaurant business, opening the Dinner House on the property in 1968 and selling it to family friends in 1974.
A separate auction on Tuesday also offers the chance to bid on KFC memorabilia, including Sanders’ original Kentucky Colonel certificate and a letter from President Richard Nixon.
Perhaps most intriguingly, it also features Colonel Sanders’ personal planner from 1964, which contains an unlabeled recipe with 11 herbs and spices. Could it be KFC’s secret recipe, which Sanders is credited with formulating?
Auctioneer Bill Menish of The Menish Group told Business Insider that it’s up to the buyer to determine that.
“Can we tell you this is the secret recipe? We absolutely cannot,” he said. “Isn’t it extremely ironic, though, that at the back of his 1964 day planner, he absolutely listed 11 herbs and spices and the quantities required if you were to use those herbs and spices, he just didn’t write down what it was or what it was for?”
The planner recipe has prompted speculation in the past. KFC examined it during an earlier legal dispute but said the ingredients did not align with its secret recipe and could instead be for stuffing, the Associated Press reported.
Take a look inside Colonel and Claudia Sanders’ former home, as well as the items up for auction.
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