Fresh off its sale of Pizza Hut, Yum Brands is now ready to sharpen its focus on its remaining brands — Taco Bell, KFC, and Habit Burger & Grill. During the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference Wednesday morning, Chief Financial Officer Ranjith Roy said Taco Bell is well positioned to reach its average unit volume goal of $3 million, for instance, while there is significant white space for growth from Taco Bell International.
(Taco Bell’s AUVs were about $2.4 million at the end of 2025, according to Technomic data).
Roy added that KFC U.S. has started to gain positive same-store sales momentum after two decades of market share declines, while KFC International is expected to continue opening restaurants at a record pace.
Notably, Roy even hinted that there could be a new brand(s) added to the Yum Brands’ portfolio.
“The fact that we divested Pizza Hut should signal to everyone that we are prepared to make bold moves around our portfolio where it makes sense. So, if the question is, would we add another brand? Sure. If it makes sense, we will do it. We're open to the idea,” he said.
First thing’s first, however. Yum is currently working toward CEO Chris Turner’s Raise the B.A.R. strategy and accelerating growth at its existing brands, which doesn’t leave much time to spare, Roy said.
“When you think about adding another brand, a huge part of our focus is first — have we really raised the bar in our existing brands? We have a bunch of work to do over the next several months and over the next year. We're going to do that,” he said.
That means investing in the current business, maintaining a healthy balance sheet, ensuring a competitive dividend and “substantial returns” to shareholders. It also means executing Turner’s “B.A.R.” strategy, which stands for “battling for the future consumer,” “accelerating restaurant unit economics,” and “reaching the full potential of Byte by Yum,” the company’s proprietary AI and digital ecosystem.
Taco Bell
Yum has long focused on its “twin growth engines” of Taco Bell U.S. and KFC International and without Pizza Hut, that focus is expected to be even sharper. Taco Bell is already tracking ahead of its 2030 AUV targets, for example. Roy said the chain’s success, including its ability to continuously lap positive comparisons, is driven by its “magic formula” unveiled in 2025 — generate brand buzz, “dominate value,” create more occasions, and deploy more digital tools.
“We just have a brand and an operating model that can do what it does and attract more consumers, more occasions, more frequency every single year for many years to come, and so we have a lot of confidence,” he said.
That confidence extends to Taco Bell International, which has doubled its store count in just the past few years and now includes nearly 1,300 units. Roy said the brand is benefiting from the rapid growth of Mexican-inspired cuisine across the world.
“Trends are converging. Mexican-inspired cuisine is becoming cooler everywhere, and we're seeing that. And you can see the evidence in the kind of franchise partners we are talking about, the number of new markets we're going into, and the performance of Taco Bell restaurants in a number of parts of the world,” he said, adding that some markets, like Spain and India, are experiencing double-digit same-store sales growth.
Because of this performance, Taco Bell has started dedicating more resources to its international business, including marketing dollars.
“The magic formula of Taco Bell that works so well in the U.S. It's not as easily understood by local teams and franchise partners, and so we have to take a closer look at each market and bring that to life, and the Taco Bell team is doing that,” Roy said. “The world is changing, and we're executing differently.”
Taco Bell has targeted about $3 billion in system sales in its international division by 2030. Roy said he believes the potential is “a lot higher.”
“The signs we're seeing point to unlimited potential for Taco Bell in the future internationally,” he said.
KFC
On the chicken side of the business, the growth engine that is KFC International is expected to continue growing at a 5% clip for the foreseeable future.
“We have a lot of confidence when you think about the paybacks KFC is getting (in some markets like the Middle East),” Roy said. “When you get two-to-three-year paybacks, it's a no-brainer to keep opening restaurants. Place like Latin America, where we recently changed franchisees, made a number of operational changes, and now unit growth is accelerating — we want to replicate that in places like Western Europe.”
Such replication comes as KFC executes its brand modernization initiative, launched this summer and led by a fairly new leadership team, including CEO Scott Mezvinsky, who joined from Taco Bell nearly two years ago. The initiative includes menu innovation, modernized restaurants, and refreshed branding throughout the global system, including, eventually, the U.S.
Roy added that KFC International is “a beast,” and that KFC U.S. isn’t representative of the global brand, generating less than 5% of Yum’s operating profit. That said, he sees some “green shoots” in the domestic market after bringing in the best “leadership players” in the field, including President Catherine Tan-Gillespie.
“The chicken category in the U.S. is crowded, but it's a large and attractive category overall. KFC U.S. just happens to have a legacy of bone-in chicken dating back to the '80s and '90s,” Roy said. “KFC marketers were almost too successful back in the '80s and '90s, creating the icon of the bucket and focusing on large, shared value and families dining together. That's not where the chicken industry is today in the U.S. We've got two decades of share loss in the U.S. We're on the path of reversing that.”
Contact Alicia Kelso at Alicia.Kelso@informa.com
Follow her on TikTok: @aliciakelso
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