Yum Brands : Celebrates 20 Years in Business

Oct 11, 2017

Here at Yum! Brands, we're celebrating our 20th anniversary as a publicly traded NYSE company. What started as a subsidiary of PepsiCo has grown into a company whose three iconic global restaurant brands-KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell-lead the chicken, pizza and Mexican categories worldwide. We're very proud of that and couldn't have done it without all of our people.

We also take pride in the fact that we boast nearly 44,000 locations in over 135 countries. This expansion harks back to our mission. We come to work every day with one purpose-to create a world with more Yum!-which means we'll take a moment to stop and reflect on our two-decade milestone, but will quickly refocus on building the world's most loved, trusted and fastest growing restaurant brands.

It's true that we've helped to transform the QSR industry over our history. Just two years prior to our 1997 founding, Pizza Hut reinvented the way we think about crust by introducing Stuffed Crust, a pizza positioned to actually be eaten backwards, crust first, and a phenomenon that has stretched all over the world.

And Taco Bell's Doritos Locos Taco still remains one of the top breakthrough innovations in fast food. In 2012, we introduced the crunchy Doritos chip as a hard taco shell. Consumers loved the Taco Bell and Doritos mash-up so much that they bought more than 1 billion of the Doritos Locos Taco in just three years.

KFC, our heritage brand, has managed to look 65 years young by introducing new, southern-inspired regional offerings like the now famous Nashville Hot and Georgia Gold recipes. Plus, there was that time we made sunscreen that smells like our Extra Crispy fried chicken.

But we're also set to succeed going forward. KFC is a global powerhouse that has nearly 21,000 restaurants worldwide. Pizza Hut is making is easier to get a better pizza with nearly 16,500 restaurants. And Taco Bell is a culture-centric, lifestyle brand with more than 6,500 restaurants and a huge opportunity for international expansion.

And we'll maintain this growth by transforming to an at least 98 percent franchised model by the end of 2018.

Looking back, we've done a lot right, and we'll continue to do so thanks to our unrivaled culture and talent. Together, with our leadership, employees and franchisees, we'll create a world with more Yum!.

Here's to the next 20 years - the best is yet to come!