- Harold Pierce
Harold Pierce (
August 11 ,1917 –March 8 ,1988 ) was anAfrican-American entrepreneur who founded the successfulHarold's Chicken Shack restaurant chain inChicago .Pierce was born in Midway,
Alabama and moved to Chicago in 1943 fromFreemanville, Alabama to work as achauffeur for Jack Stern, a furniture store owner. By 1950, he was running a small restaurant with his wife, Hilda, on 39th Street. The H & H specialized in chicken feet and dumplings. Pierce thought that he could adapt his recipe for fried chicken, and a friend, Gene Rosen, who ran a poultry shop nearby, offered him some chickens to experiment with. The resultant recipe caused Pierce to open Harold's Chicken Shack at 47th and Greenwood in 1950.He franchised the idea out to friends and family who opened additional Harold Chicken Shacks throughout Chicago. One of Pierce's stipulations was that they purchase their chickens from Rosen. Otherwise, Pierce didn't interfere with the management of the stores, which led to deviations in the techniques, flavors, and qualities of the product as well as variations in the menu from one restaurant to another.
After retiring in the early 1980s, he moved to
Beaverville, Illinois , where he indulged in a passion for raising hunting dogs.Pierce died in
Kankakee, Illinois ofprostate cancer in 1988. His second wife, Willa, took over running the business and began expanding it outside of Chicago. Willa died on January 21, 2003 in Beaverville.References
* "Harold Pierce, 70, Dies, Chicken Franchise Founder," "Jet", March 28, 1988
* "Harold Pierce, 70, founder of Harold's Chicken Shacks," "Chicago Sun-Times ", March 11, 1988.
* [http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi Social Security Death Index]External links
* Sula, Mike. [http://www.chicagoreader.com/pdf/060414/060414_harolds.pdf "The First Family of Fried Chicken"] , "
Chicago Reader ",April 14 ,2006 .
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