Yum!

The Fast Food Giant Eating up the World

Yum! Brands is an American fast food company, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. It is

one of the world’s largest fast food restaurant companies, and owns some big name restaurant
chains such as Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Pizza Hut and the Mexican food outlet Taco
Bell. Yum! has pursued an extensive expansion strategy into emerging markets, most notably
India, Russia and China.

With 37,000 restaurants in 110 countries, Yum! even eclipses that more famous icon of
American colonisation, McDonald’s, to rank as the world’s largest restaurant chain in terms
of numbers of outlets. For Yum! the task is to forge onward in this virgin territory, but also to
shore up its gains against the hungry McDonald’s and other fast-food giants, all the while
trying to keep the home fires burning back in the US, where sales are challenging because
consumers are watching their wallets and their waistlines. The 23 years since Yum! opened
its first KFC in China near Beijing’s Tiananmen Square provide a masterclass in overseas
expansion. Its success to date has tempted a hundred imitations and whose progress in the
future will be one of the most closely watched stories in corporate America.

“Yum!’s is an amazing story about how they conquered China so much earlier than their
main rivals,” says RJ Hottovy, an analyst at Morningstar. “Part of the reason is that they built
up their supply chain and their distribution system quickly, and that is giving them a real
competitive advantage. When you are setting up restaurants in new territories it is often
difficult to procure packaging and to develop good relationships with suppliers, but Yum!
now has a nice little edge.”

China has become so important to Yum! that it now splits its sales there into a separate
division ranking equal to its US market. Last year, 33 per cent of its operating profits came
from China, nudging the 38 per cent from the US, and it sees much greater potential still.
Adding in Pizza Hut, which is pitched as a mid-market family dining experience in China,
there will be 475 new Yum! outlets in there this year, on top of the record 509 added last
year.

There are almost three times as many KFCs now in mainland China than there are
McDonald’s restaurants, which opened its doors there just three years later, in 1990. Mr
Hottovy says competition is hotting up, however. “At the time that Yum! was accelerating in
China, McDonald’s was working on a turnaround in the US, but since that has been
completed, it has turned its attention to international expansion in a big way and is planning
to double its presence in China, so the competition for Yum is going to be increasing,” he
said.

“McDonald's, with its well-known brand, its advertising and its scale, will be a major player.
But there is room for both. This is all about the rise of the middle-income consumer in China
that is fuelling the growth, the story that we hear so much about.”
All of the Yum! brands are storied American companies. KFC was founded by Harland
Sanders in 1952, when he was already an established Kentucky businessman and had earned
the title “Kentucky Colonel” for his services to the state. Pizza Hut traces its history back
almost as far, and the younger Taco Bell, whose growth has mirrored the growth of the
Mexican community and the popularity of its cuisine, was founded in 1962. The three chains
were pulled together by Pepsi, the drinks-maker, which ran a restaurant division until 1997,
when it decided to spin off the lot.

The growth trajectory in China has not been without its setbacks, including a dip in sales at
existing restaurants there in 2005, but David Novak, the former Pepsi executive who has been
Yum! Chief Executive since 2000, boasts that the company’s infrastructure in China will not
only carry it through but allow it to best its rivals. “China is predicted to be the fastest-
growing major economy in the world,” he said in the company’s latest annual report. “In fact,
it is expected to grow its middle class from around 300 million today to 500 million people in
2020. Like I’ve said in the past, we will no doubt have some bumpy years, but I wouldn’t
trade our long-term position in China with any consumer company in the world.”

It is worth remembering that what Yum! is doing has never been done before. Who really
knows what the Chinese appetite for Western-style fast food really will turn out to be? Both
KFC and Pizza Hut have adapted their menus to local tastes, and their advertising, too. But,
continuing with its second-quarter results last night, the focus is shifting to other expansion
opportunities in China and beyond. The company is trialling a new Chinese food chain, called
East Dawning, so that it can use its formidable distribution infrastructure for a more diverse
range of brands and cuisines – just in case.

And then there are the other emerging markets. Yum! has more than 70 KFCs in India, as
well as 160 Pizza Huts, and it just opened its first Taco Bell in the country in March. It
promises to hit 1000 outlets in total by 2015, employing 50,000 people and raking in $100m
in operating profit. Meanwhile, Mr Novak is hoping to engineer a dramatic expansion of
Taco Bell, too. “Two global brands - and one on the way,” he is fond of saying. Taco Bell,
with its menu of Mexican staples, from burritos and nachos to tacos, brought in just 3 per
cent of its sales from outside the US in 2008, but that low figure was not for want of trying.
The chain has attempted launches across the world on several occasions since the Eighties,
but never gained popular acceptance. It is only now sticking a toe back into the European
market, with a return to the UK via a first outlet in the Lakeside shopping centre, which
opened two weeks ago.
In the US, the focus is on sprucing up the menus across the Yum! outlets, and that means
making them healthier. At KFC, less chicken is being fried (hence a preference for using the
initials) and more is being grilled. At Pizza Hut, putting chicken wings on a wider menu has
helped reverse a slide in revenues, while Taco Bell is pushing salads. More important perhaps
to the company’s financial health is a move to switch the US business from being owned and
operated directly by Yum! from its headquarters at 1,900 Colonel Sanders Lane in Louisville,
Kentucky, to being run by franchisees. The revenue from licence fees is lower, but at least it
is stable and the margins are higher.

Results last night showed Yum! boosted operating profit by 10 per cent in the US, despite flat
revenues. As ever, China eclipsed that, increasing by 33 per cent. In the quarter, the company
opened 59 restaurants in China and a further 175 in 50 other countries. In short, the
stagnation of its US business does not mean that an American corporation is doomed to
stagnate itself, if it can seize opportunities around the world.

Foley, S. (2010) ‘The Fast Food Giant Eating up the World’, Independent, 14 July, p. 36.