yum brands

Fortune Staff

The 25th Fortune World’s Most Admired Companies list suggests that tech giants’ peers respect them as much as ever.

World's Most Admired Companies

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

Fortune 500

Current All-Star Rank

Industry

The fast-food corporation operates more than 50,000 restaurants worldwide; its brands include KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut.

Yum Brands | 2023 World's Most Admired Companies

legacy

Sector

Previous All-Star Rank

Industry Rank

Previous Industry Rank

Overall Score

Innovation

People Management

Use of Corporate Assets

Social Responsibility

Quality of Management

Financial Soundness

Long-Term Investment Value

Quality of Products/Services

Global Competitiveness

Yum Brands

Yum Brands | 2023 World's Most Admired Companies | Fortune

Don Reisinger

KFC Restaurant in China Dedicated to Communist Lei Feng

/2019/03/05/kfc-restaurant-china-lei-feng/

Laura Stampler

Pizza Hut’s Upping Its Ordering Game With One of Its Largest Acquisitions Ever

/2018/12/05/pizza-hut-acquire-quikorder/

Andrew Nusca

The Key to Taco Bell’s Tone? ‘We Think of Ourselves As an Underdog’

/2018/11/29/taco-bell-marisa-thalberg/

Chris Morris

Free Tacos and the World Series: How Taco Bell’s Promotion Became a Cottage Industry

/2018/10/31/free-tacos-taco-bell-world-series/

Greg, you always talk about the importance of a company's culture and you wanna create a culture of innovation at Yam where employees make big courageous and disruptive decisions. As a CEO, how do you make that happen? First of all, you have to believe in all people. And one of the fundamental values at Yum! is that we believe in all people. So, religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, it doesn't matter. What we're going to do is create a culture where everyone matters and everyone has an opinion. That's where the first, that's the fundamental. The second thing is, I look for leaders that have really three characteristics. They have to be smart, they have to have a huge heart and they have to be courageous. And for me those characteristics will really will define us within ou culture making this big bold transformative decisions that we're making. I understand that you teach these leadership classes with small groups of employees. What is the number one thing you want them to learn from these sessions? I wanted to learn that in- out culture. You can make big, bold decisions and you'll get support, because not every big, bold, courageous decision is going to work, right? I want people to come to work and be their true self. I find the best employees are when we've created a culture, you come to work, you can be your true self, you will contribute so much better. Then if you think you have to sort of behave or act, or look a certain way. I hate that, what I love is people that come to work to be themselves. Greg, how did you learn all of this leadership stuff? Well I think I got it from my dad, I got it from people that I was with in the beginning, in the early days who So I said look, it's the old things, you know. People don't care how much until they know how much you care. I think having compassion for people, you know. I think everybody brings something great. It's just, do you have en environment and a place where that greatness can shine. And you've got to be a kind person. I think you have to be kind. And I think leaders today have to have more humility. Well getting back to all your focus on innovation, coming up with new food ideas is critical to your success. So have you found a way to motivate and inspire your employees so that they experiement and they try new things? Yeah, well innovation can't be what you do on a Thursday. You can't tell we're gonna innovate on Thursday, and the other days we're gonna run the business. Innovation has to be in the spirit of the organization, which is you always have to be restless, relentless, you always wanna do better. And then you just have to encourage experimentation. So what is your tolerance for making attempts at new things and then having them fail? My tolerance is very high, cuz I've tried new things when I was much more junior in my career. I tried things, I failed, I learned. I think you learn more from failure than from success. You can try something in one restaurant. We've got 44, 000 restaurants. So even if it doesn't go well in one restaurant it's not gonna impact the business. So Gray, you spent a big part of your career, the early years, at Unilever. You've been at Yum for 23 years. I'm sure you've had a lot of mentors along the way back, what's the best leadership advice you ever got. So [ UNKNOWN ] who was my marketing manager my first job at [ UNKNOWN ] that said Greg I want you to do the job that no one else wants to do because in those jobs, you can demonstrate the depth of your cabability and you can do things that you can't do when you had the big brands. What he was really saying was, he didn't use the words courage, but what he was saying if you do the jobs that no one else wants, you've got to be couragous to even want to do the job And I think what he was encouraging me to be is courageous as I could be. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Yum! Brands CEO Greg Creed Fosters an Innovation Centered Workplace

Leadership

He believes that empowering employees is the key to growth.

Greg you're celebrating two big milestones at Yum! brands, the 20th anniversary since you were spun off from Pepsi and the one year anniversary since you separated your China operations into an independent public company, Yum China. So where do you go from here? What's the next big thing. I think there's so much opportunity for Yum! We've got three brands, we're in 129 countries. And so we've got Massive geography to expand into. I mean a lot of the world, we have like one restaurant per million population. In more developed parts of the world, we've got as many as like 27 restaurants per million population. So, the way I look at it is, we can expand KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell globally. So you've got 44, 000 restaurants already and I understand that you open six new ones every single day. I mean that's just an incredible number but how much bigger can you really get? I think we can easily double the size of them- You're going to double the size? Yeah, you can easily double the size of the- If you think about the number of people in the world, and if you think about, you know, just our ability to expand in both developed markets and developing markets. Around the world as you see we are opening a new KFC every eight hours. Somewhere in the world we open a new KFC every eight hours. We think we can open one every five hours. Why do you want to get so big? We want to bring the great taste of our food to the world. People love food, and I think food has changed in its role. Food used to be about fuel Food in a lot of parts of the world these days is about an experience. And we say an experience worth sharing. And so I think our ability to bring that, we bring food safety standards to the world. There's a lot of positive things that we do. Jobs, employment, construction, supply chain. And ultimately we had shareholder value which is really what this is about. So you talk about food experience. Yeah. What does that really mean when you walk into a KFC, a Taco Bell, or a Pizza Hut? Right. What is the experience? I care about things like the ambiance. I care about what's the setting. Is the air conditioning nice? Is the experience I'm having with the team members at the front, is it a great experience? Let's talk a little bit about Pizza Hut. You said it is struggling and you said there's a lot of work to do. Yeah. What's the plan? A lot of it is about people wanted pizzas hot. So we announced just recently we're gonna deliver our pizzas 15 degrees hotter. So we've got new delivery bags. We've upgraded the packaging. People said they wanted to track where their pizza is in the process so we've got tracking. People said they wanted a loyalty program so we've added loyalty. You could argue a lot of that's not sexy, but it is what customers really want. And listening to customers, I think is one of the most critical things we can do. Give customers what they want, not what we think they want or we think they need. You've also said that you wanted to be relevant and distinctive, what are you picturing? Well relevant distinctive and easy. You think about AMazon you know if you're going to order on Amazon which a lot of people do you don't want your pizza experience not be as good as your amazon experience. A whole thing about life being easy is what millennial particularly millennial s are really looking for so we've got a lot of work to do. But I'm really proud of what the team is doing. And I truly believe they are focusing on the things that [ UNKNOWN ] to the customers .>> Well talking about Amazon .>> Right .>> It's moving very quickly into the food business. It's got whole foods. And there was chocolate that it's gonna get into this meal kits business. What is your Amazon strategy? When our strategies Amazon strategy our strategy is to go out to business listening to our customers and what they want is delivery. So this whole idea of being a digital delivery centric business so today people know us for delivering pizza hut. We've been doing that for many many years. What people don't realize today is we have a thousand Taco Bells that now deliver, we're getting into the delivery business with KFC in the US. We deliver around the world so. Delivery will become a way for people to get access to the brands they love, which is the three brands that we've got in the Yum! portfolio. Mm- hm, every CEO I meet with talks about how critical it is to have technology involved in their operations. How is technology changing the fundamental way that Yum! operates? I see technology as an enabler. The first thing you need is great people. Without great people, this doesn't work. Often people say to me. Cuz not everyone knows what Yum is, right? So people say, well, what business is Yum in? And I go, we're in the people business. And they look at me like, and I say. I say no we sell pizzas and chicken on tucker's but we're really in the people business. So for my belief is people and then technology really as an enabler for us to connect with our customers, connect with you know the things that matter in life. Do you see a day where you might use robots in the kitchen of your various franchises or even behind the counter. I think we're gonna be a people business for a long long time. Now, there are things like marble ordering and other kiosks turning up in restaurants, yes there are. But at the end of the day we have chefs in our KFCs and we literally take raw chicken and we cook it. So, I think we're a long long way from robots replacing people in our restaurants.

Yum! Brands CEO Thinks Key To Success is To Focus on the Details

Greg Creed wants to be “relevant, distinctive, and easy” by paying attention to what matters most to the customers.

Yum Brands

Company Information

World's Most Admired Companies
As of 2/1/2023

Yum Brands

Company Information

World's Most Admired CompaniesAs of 2/1/2023

World's Most Admired Companies
As of 2/1/2023