Yum Brands has either acquired or developed several new technology capabilities over the years. Now the company is consolidating them under one collection.
The owner of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut on Thursday announced the formation of Byte by Yum, a collection of AI-driven software products including online and mobile ordering, point-of-sale, kitchen and delivery optimization, menu management, inventory and labor management.
Joe Park, chief digital and technology officer for the Louisville, Kentucky-based Yum, will serve as president of Byte by Yum.
“As the world’s largest restaurant company, Yum’s scale allows us to make massive strides in growing our proprietary digital and AI-driven platform in partnership with franchisees,” Park said in a statement.
The company said 25,000 of Yum’s 61,000 global restaurants around the world use at least one of Byte’s technology capabilities.
Yum made the announcement on a day when the company reported its fourth-quarter earnings, with mixed end-of-year earnings results. KFC’s same-store sales declined 5% in the U.S., while Taco Bell’s same-store sales grew 5%. Pizza Hut’s same-store sales declined 2% and Habit Burger was flat.
Yum has been pushing a variety of technology initiatives globally in recent years, believing that they give the company and its operators a competitive advantage. The company’s brands generate more than 300 million digital transactions per year and digital sales at Yum Brands grew 15%.
With the creation of Byte by Yum, the company is phasing out the legacy names for some of these technology products, such as the Yum Commerce Platform or the company’s SuperApp.
In the U.S., Taco Bell uses Byte’s online ordering, point-of-sale and back-of-house technologies. Pizza Hut U.S. uses the company’s delivery technology. KFC global uses an AI restaurant coach to improve operational consistency and restaurant manager efficiency.
Yum CEO David Gibbs said that, in building its own tech stack, Yum is ensuring that everything plays well together, which is difficult when companies use a bunch of different technologies from different companies. And executives said they can add technology to different brands more quickly than they could otherwise.
“We are the largest restaurant company in the world,” Gibbs said. “We should have the best technology for our franchisees at the lowest possible cost.”
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