We will kick this off. I'm Sara Senatore, BofA's restaurants analyst. I want to thank everybody who's joined us online and in this room today. Joining me up here are Scott Mezvinsky, CEO of KFC division at Yum!, and Matt Morris, head of investor relations. We're going to treat this as a fireside chat. We'll have a little bit of a dialogue here, and then towards the end, I will open it up for questions from the room. Hopefully, we can have a good conversation here. Thank you both for joining.
Yeah. Thank you.
Scott, okay, you've been in the role for about a year. Maybe you could talk to us about the top priorities you have for KFC and what you've done so far, what's near term, and what maybe takes a little longer term.
Yeah. Sure. I'm really excited to be in this role. I've been with the KFC brand for 17 years, and I was with Taco Bell for four years prior to this role. It's a fantastic brand. We have great franchisees and team members all over the world. We're in 151 countries. It's a big, powerful brand, $35 billion in total system sales. I'm really excited about where the category's going. The category's going towards chicken. It's the fastest-growing protein all over the world, every continent and QSR out of QSR. That gets me excited as someone that is leading a chicken-centric brand. I believe we're the kings of chicken, our priority really is to set the standard for the modern chicken QSR.
It's not just that we're in chicken, but how do we make sure that we're as modern and as relevant as we need to be to meet the consumer where the consumer is going. That's been the number one priority is coming in and make clear strategic alignment across the world with our teams and our franchisees. For us, that means we need to have winning chicken products. We need to have the most relevant products. We need end formats and flavors. You'll see bigger, crispier tenders. You'll see more sauces coming to life. You'll see more boneless in general. We will continue to make sure that we're famous for value, because that's important. Second plank of that is making sure that we're the most modern brand. You may have seen yesterday, as a symbol of that change, we have updated our visual identity.
We now have a new visual identity, including a new logo. It's more than just that. It's making sure that we have the right product range. You'll see us going into beverages in a bigger way. KWENCH by KFC is our sub-brand. It's live here in the U.K. You're going to see us communicate in a more modern way. You're going to see our assets continue to evolve and modernize. There's a lot of good things happening to make sure that the brand stays modern and relevant to the next generation of consumers. Last, which is not new for KFC, but it's one of our historical strengths, with an area that I think we continue to accelerate, and that's development. How do we continue to accelerate growth? We've opened nearly 10,000 net new restaurants in the last five years.
We think there's opportunity for us to accelerate that pace in a profitable way with our franchisee partners.
Thank you. That's a great overview.
Yeah.
As you said, we were in one of your stores yesterday in the U.K.
Yeah.
I want to ask you about the market, because it feels like a real proof point also Matt. As Matt pointed out when I sent him my initial list of questions, I tend to have a U.S.-centric view.
Yeah.
This is actually really important to note. I think you said last night that the U.S. is actually relatively small as a percentage of the 13% of sales and even less of operating profits. We do want to focus on the rest of the world. The U.K. has been very strong. I think as you said, 7% same store sales. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what distinguishes the U.K., whether it's operations or strategy, and more broadly, are there characteristics that define a lot of your strongest markets?
Yeah. The U.S. business is still symbolically and strategically important to us. I started my career in the U.S. You're right, the financial materiality is just not that high relative to the rest of our business. Specifically to the U.K., one of the things I'm most excited about is they're probably executing the global strategy as well as anybody. They have a strong local team here that's driving that execution with great franchisee partners. It is also the most competitive chicken market outside the U.S. There's a lot of competitors here. It's probably the most crowded chicken space outside the U.S. We're still very far ahead in terms of distribution, and we have roughly 1,000 units here. I don't think there's any other of our competitors that are anywhere close to that.
We have the brand strength, the brand love, and the distribution, having been here 60 years, to really take advantage of the opportunities and the trends in chicken. Specifically, yesterday, it was great seeing you and others in our restaurants. You noticed that we launched new tenders yesterday in the U.K. with a range of seven new sauces. More adventurous sauces, more flavorful sauces than we've had before. Even the way they came to the consumer was done in a more exciting way, in a bigger, more dippable kind of pot. They've launched a new sandwich that's fully dunked or dripped, as they call it here. It's fully sauced. You're starting to see some of the things I talked about at the beginning come to life in a market like the U.K., which is a highly competitive market.
The results are coming because we are executing at a very high level. From a communications perspective, they're some of the best- in- class, how they communicate to the consumer, both above the line, but also from how they connect in culture, how they use their social channels. If you're living in the U.K., you probably heard the Pickle Mania that we had, and it went viral with a Pickle Puffer jacket. That's an example of us just connecting with culture. U.K., the team here are fantastic, and they're doing a lot of the things that we talk about really, really well. The proof point, as you mentioned, was 7% same-store sales in Q1, in a category that's not growing nearly that much.
Right. It's interesting you mentioned you've been here for 60 years, it's not as if this is brand new to the market. You mean We've been able to maintain that relevance-
Yeah
for a long time. Maybe talk a little bit about perhaps some of the other markets where you've seen something done, also I guess similar success. Also, I think something that was mentioned yesterday was there's a sort of a recipe sharing or idea sharing that happens.
Yeah
This idea of global best practices.
Yeah.
You can maybe.
Yeah. One of the things I'm trying to do as I've come into this role is making sure that there's great ideas that happen all over the world, and I want to make sure we're exporting and amplifying the best ideas. The encouragement is how do we collaborate as a system but also maintain enough flexibility that there can be great innovation happening. The example yesterday was as simple as there's a WhatsApp group with all of our FIT leaders from across the world, which is Food Innovation Technology. They're the ones that develop the products. They can share best ideas and launch them. Best example of that is in the U.K., the pickle promotion that I talked about started in Canada.
It was an idea that came from Canada, did well in Canada. U.K. took it and made it even better here, or built on the success of Canada and did it in their own way, and that will probably travel. Those are examples. I think you'll see more of us collaborations, where we get IP properties. In the past, we've done them maybe in one country or a handful of countries. We really want to make sure that we're doing it in as many countries as possible to really leverage the scale that KFC has.
Yeah, I think you mentioned with LeBron.
Well, LeBron was Taco Bell.
Sorry.
Taco Bell example, it's okay.
Okay.
It's part of the Yum! family. It's a good example of Taco Bell U.S. did something. I was at Taco Bell before. Taco Bell U.S. did something with LeBron, and we were able to get the rights for global. Obviously LeBron is, well, not obviously, but LeBron's highly relevant in China. We were able to use LeBron in China, and historically we've just been, okay, let's get LeBron in the U.S., do whatever the U.S. was doing. Sean Tresvant, who's the CEO, said, "Let's act more like a global brand in Taco Bell," and took the LeBron IP and put it across the world.
Okay. Sorry about that.
That's okay.
Again, best practice sharing.
I love Taco Bell too.
Okay. Right. I am going to ask you about that a little bit because to your point, you had four years of really deep insights developed in there. Let me shift a little bit to, well, the growth algorithm for KFC. You talked about accelerating unit growth. I think about sort of the long-term average same-store sales growth has been somewhere in that sort of 3% range. I am not asking you to set out targets, as you talk about the idea of accelerating unit growth, and possibly even just sort of system-wide sales growth in aggregate, what are going to be the key drivers of that?
Yeah. KFC has always been known as a development machine. I think that's the one thing KFC International in particular of opening consistently a ton of net new units. Last year it was nearly 2,000 net new units. We will continue to be a development machine, and we think there's more opportunities to accelerate those numbers. One of the things I also want to bring to KFC is the same reputation of driving same-store sales. We want to be both a same-store sales driving machine and a net new unit development machine. There's really four areas that we're focused on to hopefully accelerate our same-store sales growth from historical levels.
Number one is what are the consumer use occasions that we need to go into in a bigger way, and how do we. It could be tenders and sauce is going to make us more relevant for more occasions. It could be more individual occasions versus we're more known for sharing occasions. How do we really get after these occasions in a big way and actually operate differently too? It's not just about doing LTO here or there to get after it. It's how do we create sales layers that are sustainable across the world? That's number one. Number two is beverages, and specifically KWENCH, which you were able to try yesterday. KWENCH by KFC. It's, I think, our first real sub-brand within the market, within our portfolio on the menu. U.K., again, is a lead market, also helping drive their success.
They've launched it in the majority of their stores. They haven't yet turned on the marketing machine. It's doing incredibly well in the U.K. and helping drive some of their results and making us more modern as well. The third would be loyalty. We're candidly way behind on loyalty. We know we have a lot of opportunity to accelerate the number of loyalty users we have. What we know about loyalty customers from our own data, from Taco Bell data, from competitor data, is loyalty customers access the brand more frequent, so it drives frequency. There's a direct correlation to loyalty customers and frequency. We know that there's nothing but upside as we get our act together on loyalty.
The fourth is what we're calling retail rigor, which is essentially just the short term, getting value right every day, getting innovation right every day, making sure that when we come to market on the short term, our marketing calendar is as sharp as possible.
Mm-hmm. I think one of the other sort of distinctions you talked about, I guess, is this launch and love.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's great. I think if we're self-critical, in the past we would launch things and then leave them. It's like it's fun to launch, and then you don't support it after the launch. You get a big pop in sales once you launch it, and then you go on to the next flavor of the month thing. Now I think we need to operate differently in that if there are big ideas and big categories that we should be in, we need to launch and love, which means we need probably dedicated teams launching these, but then also thinking about a three-year plan towards supporting it so that it becomes a bigger. That can mean not just putting media investment against it could also mean innovation, right? If you think about KWENCH has a range of products today.
We're going to launch it in a big way. At some point we probably need to refresh some of the, bring more excitement and bring innovation towards that range of products and continue to build that sales layer over time and have Target objectives from a sales layer too, not just, "Hey, we're going to launch it and love it," but also have strong KPIs against that we'll measure ourselves.
Okay. Thank you. It's so helpful to hear you talk about the differences. You're a real expert in, to your point, retail rigor. I guess one thing you mentioned was expanded day parts or use occasions. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what you see as the biggest opportunities. I know you mentioned tenders and sauces. I think you said the U.K. was actually, I think, 70% boneless at this point. Is that an outlier in the system, or is there a desire to move in that direction?
We go where the consumer's going. It's consumer-dependent. We're consumer-centric. What we won't do is fight the consumer. We're not going to try to tell the consumer what they like. We're not going to force chicken on the bone with consumers if they don't want chicken on the bone. Specifically, I think there's many markets that today still have a high chicken on the bone mix, particularly in the emerging world. That's great. We have a great product, and the consumer use them. In other markets, there's some markets we have 0% chicken on the bone. France, for example, we don't even have chicken on the bone. We have wings, but it's 100% boneless if you count wings as a new format towards that. That's all driven by the consumer. The one thing, as I said, we're not going to do is have rules of you must sell.
You must do that, because we don't want to drive complexity for our operators and our franchisee partners just for the sake of having a product range that may be what historically our brand was, that our consumers no longer want. That will hopefully enable us to drive better execution against what the consumer do want. The one thing we see across the world is whether you have a high COB mix, chicken on the bone mix, or a low chicken on the bone mix, the younger consumers are gravitating towards more boneless. For now, I would say boneless is going to here to stay and become a bigger and bigger part of our menu globally.
Right. That, I think you mentioned, you said, I think snacking was a big opportunity.
Yeah.
Is lunch still an opportunity, yeah?
Yep. I think if you look at how, this is a broad comment because, again, we're in 151 countries, there's different dynamics everywhere. Generally, we skew towards dinner and group occasion. One of the things that we need to continue to work on is being more relevant at lunch, having a great burger range, or chicken sandwich range. I don't know if it's American audience or a European audience, chicken burgers and chicken sandwiches is an opportunity for us to continue to increase our relevancy for lunch. Lunch is obviously a big part of the category that we generally under-index in, we want to get our fair share, if not more than our fair share for lunch.
Right. Okay. One thing you did mention also just now is operational complexity. I wanted to ask you in terms of the unit, I guess, the performance of the individual units. One of the things that Chris has talked about is, and that I think you have echoed for sure, is improving franchisee unit economics.
Yeah.
Maybe we could talk a little bit about the opportunity there, and what the implications might be then for unit growth.
First of all, we're 98% franchise. Unit economics is the biggest enabler of development and growth. We need to make sure that we're always mindful of that. I think 80% of our markets have four-year paybacks or less, so that's a big driver of our existing growth. There needs to remain a focus. There's opportunities for us to get even sharper. As I think about, as the next finance guy and the next development guy, how to drive sharper unit economics, there's really three areas that we work on. One is sales. That's the best way to drive unit economics, is just get sales going and flow through from that. We talked earlier about how we're going to do that and how we can hopefully sharpen or increase our AUVs that will make unit economics easier.
Second would be taking costs out of the middle of the P&L, where we know we have a global supply chain team for the first time to help us enable taking advantage of our scale. We have local supply chain teams also working really hard every day to make sure that we're buying efficiently, and we don't take from the consumer. There's just how do we get sharper and sharper on the efficiency of our operations. Technology can play a role in that, too. We've talked a lot about Byte and the role it can play, but tech in general will help us, I think, from a unit economic perspective, both from driving check in many cases, and sometimes also helping on ops efficiency. Third would be CapEx. We're always looking.
To improve our CapEx across the world, including evaluating where we source our equipment from and what supply chain is from that point of view.
Right. You can sort of raise the numerator and also lower the denominator, get that. Yeah.
Exactly.
Okay. Right. That makes sense. I guess maybe since you mentioned technology, I do want to talk about that. I think it's something that Yum! has invested heavily in and has created an advantage. Maybe, let's talk about it just with respect to KFC specifically. Where are we in terms of the Byte rollout? If you could help us understand here in the broadest terms, Byte was, I think, split into two bundles. There's digital and then there's operations. Maybe you can talk us through that a little bit.
Yeah. Byte Digital would be e-commerce. Our app. The U.S. is on that, for KFC, for Taco Bell. Taco Bell U.S., I think, has the full Byte platform and suite, which is the most Developed by market for us, for Yum! Outside the U.S., for KFC, we're working on two lighthouse markets. Australia's going to be the lighthouse market for Byte Commerce or the e-commerce, Byte Digital. As we get Australia up and running, then we'll expand it to more markets. For the Smart Ops or the back of house, POS, kitchen display system, the whole system for making the operations work, that is the U.K. We're in the process of rolling it out here, again, as a lighthouse market, both those countries are probably two of our top five countries in terms of size and scale. We have teams. We have relatively sizable teams in each of those markets.
As we get those rolled out there, it'll make it more easy to roll it out in other parts of the world.
Remind me, franchisees have to be on board with this. Essentially, these are franchisees who have seen the use case.
Look, franchisees have to have a tech platform regardless. We believe that a restaurant company building a tech platform for a restaurant company is going to be the most effective way to do this, and the franchisees are buying into that. Because if there was a better third-party solution that existed that we could scale globally, we would. It doesn't exist, which is ultimately why Yum! decided to make the decision that we have to do this ourselves, because that's going to be the only way to support our franchisees in the most efficient way and take advantage of our scale, of our operating tens of thousands of restaurants all over the world. Franchisees are excited, I would say, but it is a tech rollout, so it's not necessarily an easy thing that you just go like this.
You can imagine the complexity of transitioning two systems all over the world.
You mentioned lighthouse Australia for the digital and U.K. for the Smart Ops.
Yeah.
Is it a function of the operational complexity in the U.K. or maybe?
Those are two different implementations. What we don't want to do is task one market to implementing two things at one time, which would probably not work out well. We've said, "Let's get one done really, really well." We can see what we've learned from that and expand it to other parts of the world, in case of Australia. We can come up for air and say, "Okay, now are we ready to go to the back of house solution?" To do both together would be difficult, and even Taco Bell did it that way. Taco in the U.S., they did it module by module versus everything at once.
Right. Great. Yeah, no, the one thing about covering restaurants is I've had to be a little bit more of a technologist than I. That's very little. I'm going to emphasize on little, but that's something that we spend a lot of time talking about.
Yes.
I guess maybe on that front, as you think about maybe one of the questions that always comes up when people are talking about technology is AI. I'll mention, I know Taco Bell, for example, has AI speaker boxes right now for the drive-through.
Yeah.
Maybe talk about KFC and how AI is positioned there.
Yeah. First of all, I think having a common tech stack is going to allow us to take advantage of all the benefits of AI that exist today that are coming. That's a key enabler is for us to get on the same tech stack, which is going to be important. The way I look in AI is there's roughly two areas of focus for us as a brand. One would be the consumer, how do we make the consumer's journey better, life easier, or talking to them in a more convenient way. The example I use there is as we get more and more loyalty customer data, there's going to be areas for us to personalize much greater. Traditionally, we would do A/B testing, which was very manual.
It gets you a lot of insights as you do A/B testing. There's no reason why we can't take A/B testing with AI and just really explode that and do that, what I would say A/B testing on steroids. That's going to allow us to provide a better experience for our consumers in a more personalized way. Ultimately, you could probably have a unique offer for every single consumer in the world based on what they want. That's an extreme example, but you could technically do that. The second area that I think AI's going to have a lot of benefits for us is to make our team members' life easier.
That's important. I use the example of our restaurant general managers. A lot of their activity today would be things that are not team member facing or consumer facing. Back office stuff, labor scheduling, ordering inventory, making sure they're planning the product flow for the day. Those are probably the least exciting part of their job.
Right.
The things that they don't want to do, AI can do that for them, probably, ultimately in a more efficient way, and allow the RGM to focus more on the consumer and more on his or her team.
Should we think about the sort of customer facing technology as more like a top-line driver than the, like you mentioned, team member? Is that more back of the house, or maybe that's too artificial of a distinction because, I guess if somebody's ordering digitally, it's a faster, and maybe that's labor intensive.
I think they both can be top-line drivers. It's more obvious, I guess, the consumer facing one to show that if you're more relevant for the consumer and/or you figure out how to get them to spend more because you're being more relevant to their order, either they're going to come back more or they're going to spend more on their existing. That's clear top line. If you provide team members more ease, one, it's going to enable you to put potentially more. The consumer's demanding more complexity. They don't say it that way. They want more variety, they want more.
Customization
There's more channels, more customization, more flavors. That shows up in the back of house is complexity. As we're able to, if we don't change how we operate back of house, we're not going to be able to meet consumers where they're going. Through technology, then I think we can provide an even better experience for our consumer, which will show up in top line. Secondly, if you give the team members more time to spend with the consumer, and they're not always hurried or rushed, they can be friendlier. They can understand the consumer more. That will also, I think, have top-line benefits.
Right. Yeah, this idea of AI not replacing people, but rather freeing up time for them to spend
Yeah
to the part that creates value, also that presumably they enjoy more
Yeah
which is interacting with the person.
Yeah, the human to human connection.
Yeah. I guess, maybe last question on this, or maybe you could just remind us. Where is KFC? Would we as customers see it yet? Is it in this sort of AI, or is it visible to us, or it's still
Yeah, there's a call center in South Africa, for example-
Okay
that is leveraging AI. I think there's pockets of it in a lot of places of the world. We're using it in U.K. to help make our organization more effective. Hopefully you only see the benefits and you don't realize it's-
Right
AI. I think the Taco Bell drive-through example is a good one. When I was at Taco Bell, when we implemented it, we got consumer research that said that the AI got scores more friendly than the human. While that was counterintuitive, the reason was, is the human is trying to do three things at once.
Right.
They don't have time to be friendly. They're hurried, they're rushed. It's not that they aren't friendly people, it's that we were asking them to do too much. It's an example of how AI can help make the consumer experience better and the team member experience better.
Right. I actually remember hearing about that or something similar, which is the part of people like digital ordering, even though it's slower, they feel more efficient, but also to your point, the rush is really if they're talking to somebody who's trying to get them through the line, and a computer doesn't do that.
Yeah.
A computer's also pretty good at upselling.
Yeah.
in a way that a human might not be. You mentioned loyalty. You have a loyalty program in the U.K., I think.
Yeah. One of the things, we're behind on loyalty. The way I look in the world is it's really through our top 20 market lens. Our top 20 markets ex-China are 70% of our business ex-China. When you're 150 countries, you got to focus a bit. The top 20 is where I look at how are we doing against the strategy overall. The reality is, when I got into this job, over half our markets didn't have a loyalty program. That's been a big focus of ours is how do we make sure we have loyalty programs just to start with. That's a good starting point.
Yeah.
U.K. is one of those markets that has a loyalty program, and they're doing a good job with it.
Yeah. Okay. Let me shift a little bit.
By end of this year, the all 20 will have a loyalty program.
Okay. All right. That's good. Does the U.S. have one?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
I get pop-up notices from them all the time.
All right. I will need to opt in. I know I have the app, but okay.
Yeah, that's it.
Okay.
Use the app.
Okay. Yeah, my older son in particular is a huge fan-
Oh, great
of KFC. Yeah.
What's his favorite?
I think he actually likes the bone-in.
Oh, good.
Don't get rid of it. Yeah.
That's good. No danger of that in the U.S.
Okay, good.
Yeah.
He likes chicken. He likes white meat, though, which I know can be hard to find outside the U.S.
Yeah
Yeah, he's an American, truly. Okay. You mentioned Taco Bell, and some of the things they do well. Obviously, you were there for four years. It represents a lot of the Yum! profitability pool. It's just been very consistent. I guess maybe, especially because there are probably fewer of them here, maybe just help the audience or us understand what has made Taco Bell such a strong performer for so long.
Yeah. We talk about being a category of one. It's truly differentiated and uniquely positioned as QSR Mexican. It essentially dominates that category, which I think they're 60 years old as well or something like that. When Glen Bell came, if you think about the U.S., if you go to a U.S. grocery aisle, there's tortillas everywhere. Salsa is now the number one condiment. It's over ketchup. These are macro trends that have happened probably in the last 20 years that's very different for the U.S. 60 years ago, that wasn't the case. Mexican food was not popular as overall. We've been able to create, Glen Bell created a fast food category that now the whole macro economy in the U.S. is going towards, and actually outside the U.S. as well.
They're not as far, as we look at what's the fastest growing food across the world, Mexican is up there. They're able to participate in that. They're able to be authentic there. I think more important than just taking advantage of those trends, I think they're a fantastic brand that's been built over a lot of years. A lot of great people have been part of that brand. They're relevant to culture. They connect to culture really well. They're very innovative from a product perspective. A lot of the things that they do well are things that we're trying to do as well with KFC, especially outside the U.S., is how do we connect culturally, be more relevant in culture? How do we lean into innovation, provide more excitement and flavor for our consumers? Because that's a winning formula, we think.
Mm-hmm. You mentioned, I guess, Sean, it was not his magic formula.
Yes
which I guess he's trademarked, but is.
Yeah. He wouldn't let me use that.
Okay.
I would've liked to, but I can't.
You talk about the pillars, I guess.
Yeah
underpin it and maybe how they apply or what you see as an opportunity for KFC.
Yeah. The magic formula for those that aren't as familiar of it as you and I are is really four things. It's brand buzz through product innovation, it's value, it's consumer use occasions, and it's digital. Things I've been talking about as well. I think the brand buzz in particular, how they do it through product and innovation is really something that they do a fantastic job. Best- in- class. I think they're best- in- class on value as well. They are consistently known for value. They have the top value scores in the U.S. I think they're very innovative in value. It's not just offering food at a low price when the $5 box has historically been very strong for them.
When everyone else in the category, an example, went towards a $5 price point and from our lens, we're cost engineering to meet that $5 price point, they came out with the Luxe Box at $7, which was a way to say just for a couple of dollars more, you can get what you really want and not have to compromise to get it cost engineered. They've really hit the value well, and consistently, and they've always been known for value. They will continue to be known for value. Those are two areas that I think we can take inspiration from digitally. I think they're doing a lot of great things with their app in the U.S. as well. There's things that I think KFC is proud of and Taco Bell can take inspiration from, but vice versa, we can take inspiration from Taco Bell as well.
That's the great thing about being part of the Yum! is that we can learn from each other, we can be inspired from each other, we can connect and talk about these things collectively. Sometimes there's people that move back and forth. It's really how do we take advantage of two powerhouse brands, one really strong in the U.S., one really strong outside the U.S., and grow and learn from each other.
That's a good segue to, I guess, the last general topic I want to ask, and then we can open up for questions, but which is essentially, the competitive advantages that being part of Yum! imbues on KFC perhaps because I know you talked about how the U.K. is probably most competitive, second only to the U.S. Certainly, I'm sure people here have seen the emergence of other U.S. brands, chicken brands. I guess, first of all, how important is it to be first, that you've been first? Is that a big sort of the advantage that you have, the scale, you mentioned that. Maybe just talk to us a little bit about what gives you confidence that even as you see some of these other brands emerge, in these markets where you're already number one share, that you can sustain that.
I think there's a lot of head advantages we have, given that we've been building these advantages over the last 50, 60 years. Being first helps, but also just developing that brand strength, that brand love, that's not easy to do overnight. We've been doing that really well in most parts of the world for decades. I think there's another thing that is not quite as easily understood, which is if you were to go with a brand X into a new market, you would likely do it with a franchisee partner.
We have some of the top franchisee partners, and we've had them for decades. We've also, being first, not only is helpful with the consumer, but it's also helpful with the franchise landscape to say, "Here's the person in this country or the group in this country that's absolutely the right partner." That's been helpful as well, knowing that we have a great franchise community all over the world. We even got the infrastructure to support the brand. In addition to taking advantage of our scale, we have 14 business units all over the world that are generally local teams supporting the brand. Here's a good example. We have a business unit here that we've invested in, again, over the last 30, 40 years. We have a great team executing.
There's a lot of benefits that we have that are, at best, will take decades to replicate. At worst, it's probably impossible to replicate what we've built over the last 30 or 40 years.
Yeah. I know the 3 C franchise partners is something that gets talked about.
Yeah.
Those are committed, capable, and well-capitalized.
Yes.
To your point, being first, you can lock up.
Yeah
those best- in- class franchisees.
Within that, capital is usually the one that people are drawn to. Capital is the easy part. There's lots of money. Capability is the one that I would say is the hardest to do, and probably the biggest differentiator that we have is, generally speaking, again, everything's a generality when you have 150 countries, but generally speaking, we have highly capable franchisees. They are well capitalized, but they also have the capability to execute and not just throw money at it, but make sure it actually works. Then the commitment, is making sure we're aligned together to grow at the same pace and work together. There's a lot of partnership that happens in the field.
Right. Yeah. I think we've even seen in some of your peers or competitors, there have been hiccups for sure, by partnering based on who's best capitalized as opposed to who's a really good operator.
Yep.
Yeah. Ideally, you find both. One of the things, in addition to this, I did want to touch briefly on the U.S., because one of the things I think that we've seen is, as you said, that is a very competitive market, and yet KFC, you've actually, I think, maybe turned the corner on comp.
Yeah.
While it's relatively small from an operating perspective, symbolically, it's important, and it is such a competitive market. Maybe if you could talk just a little bit about how-
Yeah. The first move I made when I got this job was to put in Catherine Tan-Gillespie into the president roles. Catherine is someone that I've known for many years within the KFC system. She was the global CMO for KFC, so she's a marketer at heart. She knows the consumer really, really well, which is important. She also was a GM of our Canada business, which is the most similar to the U.S., and turned that business around. I knew she was the right person, and I know it starts with the right team. Just like we have a great team in the U.K., we needed to make sure we had an A team in the U.S. She's rebuilt her leadership team, and it's early days, but it's very encouraging to see that there's some signs of success.
They were going a couple of years of -5% same-store sales. The last three quarters have been positive for the first time in two years, positive comp. We're not claiming victory yet, but it's certainly good to see positive same-store sales, and there's a whole comeback plan that I know you know about, that Catherine's team have put together that they're continuing to execute against that we believe will be what will help turn the brand around.
I see. Okay. It's not as if everybody vacated the category. It's still intensely competitive.
No. They did not vacate the category. It's still a fast-growing category. Yeah.
Yeah. She's implemented some really important changes. I think we have maybe five or 10 more minutes, I'm open for questions from people in the room, but also, I will keep asking if we don't have anything. Okay. I will ask one question that came up in the meetings yesterday, GLP-1. It's funny, as an American, it seems like the perspective is different. We just don't see it, I think, in the data. I'll give you sort of leave to talk about it, but it is something that has come up a lot in my conversations since I've been in Europe. Maybe you could talk about the U.S. specifically and kind of what you are or not seeing.
Yeah. You know better than me that GLP-1 usage has been increasing over the last few years. If I talk about U.S., their same-store sales rate has increased during that same time. They were gone from mid comps to the six, seven. KFC U.S. went from -5 to +1 or +2s. We haven't seen in the data a material impact from GLP-1, and I would say we have more control on how to move the business than is outside of our control. There's always going to be some macro trends that we can't do anything about. It's how do we lean into them. I think one trend that's happening with or without GLP-1 is more protein is what consumer wants. They want smaller sizes, more snackable. We talk about the snacking occasion as 1 that we're trying to lean into.
Protein is good if you're in the chicken business because that's high in protein. We can maintain our relevancy across if folks want more smaller portion sizes and more protein, we can deliver that. It's just staying in touch with our consumer and making sure we meet the consumer where they are. The benefit of the snacking occasion for me is also that you can get a lower price point, sometimes allows consumers access your brand that maybe wouldn't have otherwise, especially outside the U.S.-
Yeah
if you can get that price point right.
I think we've seen a little bit of that in the U.S., but it's hard to distinguish how much of these smaller portions, are consumers gravitating, maybe because GLP-1, but a lot of it's the value proposition.
Yeah.
It plays to both of those trends, which is good. Question to you. Please.
Quick question. I just saw in the news Pizza Hut was sold. Can you comment on that?
Well
The news was made this morning, Eastern Time, that we concluded the Pizza Hut strategic review. What that means going forward for Yum! is that we have more resources, more management attention to dedicate to our higher growth brands. We see that the transaction landed in a very good place. Yum! China acquiring their revenue, their loyalty stream, and LongRange Capital acquiring the rest of Pizza, which is a tremendous operating partner in the private equity space. I think we landed in fantastic areas for both parts of the business, and it really allows Yum! to unlock shareholder value, both with what we can do with the proceeds, but also the attention on KFC.
From a KFC perspective, it doesn't really change how I operate on a day-to-day basis or how the team operates on a day-to-day basis. Chris, our CEO, has made it clear that Sean and I, Sean's my counterpart at Taco Bell, need to be 100% focused on our brands, which we have been and will continue to be. I think that's probably a question for Yum!, but for KFC, it's business as usual.
I was just looking.
Yeah. It's good timing.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Maybe I'll close out a little bit. I think we have a few more minutes, but I'll keep it tight. Maybe I'll end with Chris. He's new, right? Ish. Typically or historically, we've seen people in his role have been Yum! lifers. I guess to the extent that you can or will, maybe you could just talk about what has that meant in contrast to his predecessors. What has he done differently? Maybe how would you characterize his leadership style as you think about the strategic priorities, maybe how they've shifted or what we should expect from here?
Yeah. I've been around a long time, so I've seen all four of our CEOs. All four of them are very different, and they all four have been very effective. I think Greg Creed added something to what David Novak had done, who was our original CEO and an amazing CEO. David Gibbs added something to what Greg Creed did, and Chris is going to add something to what David did, or their legacy. Chris, one, he made a big, bold decision very early on, which we just referenced, which I think was not an easy decision to make and very bold. It shows how he thinks and that he's not afraid. I think just on personality, he came from McKinsey originally, so he's got a big, broad, strategic mind. He challenges me strategically. He helps make our strategy sharper as KFC and as Yum!.
He's very data-driven, which I appreciate as well, that there's a lot of data that goes behind all of our thinking and all of our decision-making. I think I'm confident that Yum!'s in a good spot with Chris. We will continue to grow, and it's been great so far in the last, I don't know, six to nine months since he's taken over. It's been good timing because I'm relatively new in role as well, so we've gotten to grow together in the role.
Great. I think that's a good place to close. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you.