Yum Brands continues to expand its global reach, with most of new restaurant units driven by KFC.
Yum Brands, the owner of big chains like Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut, opened 4,180 new locations last year, an expansion pace that CEO David Gibbs described to investors as an industry record.
“In my 32 years in this business, I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said on the company’s Feb. 9 quarterly earnings call.
The biggest increase came from Kentucky Fried Chicken International, which opened more than 2,400 locations while closing roughly 400. In other words, a new KFC restaurant was opened about every four hours. (Including Yum’s other brands, the company averaged a new location every two hours.)
Read the rest of this story on qz.com. Become a member to get unlimited access to Quartz’s journalism.
