YUM! Brands...Not So Yummy

Yum! Brands is the corporate parent of a host of fast food restaurants including Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, A&W and Long John Silver’s.  The Louisville, Kentucky based fast food giant is quickly becoming the most dominant fast food player in the world, generating more than $10 billion in revenues in 2007.[1]

Yum! Brands is the world's largest restaurant corporation in terms of chain restaurants with more than 35,000 restaurants in more than 110 countries and territories.  Yum’s primary growth strategy is to disseminate their junk food to every corner of the globe – particularly in the Global South.  Their China division has created over 3,000 restaurants in China, Thailand and Taiwan.[2]  This global expansion strategy may just earn them a not-so-yummy superlative: #1 exporter of diet-related disease.

If the wide array of Yum! junk food offerings isn’t enough to attract the average kid, their underhanded marketing tactics likely will.  They continue to target children through partnerships with popular kids TV programs, sports sponsorships and even an in-school program that rewards children with Pizza Hut pizzas for reading books.[3] Although executives deny marketing heavily to children, they even refuse to sign on to a voluntary agreement to limit child-targeted advertising.[4]  

Yum! Brands is intent on driving the epidemic of diabetes and other diet-related diseases by peddling its junk food to every kid in every corner of the world.  Maybe it’s about time for Yum! Brands to stop exporting an illness and start to Value [the] Meal!

1.Yum! Investors, "Financial Data" Yum! Brands, http://www.yum.com/investors/income_statement.asp.

2. Company Info, “Our Brands,” Yum!Brands Website. http://www.yum.com/company/default.asp

3. Yum! Community, “Book It Program” Yum!Brands. http://www.yum.com/responsibility/bookit.asp

4. Press Release, “Subway Urged to Set Nutrition Standards for Foods Marketed to Children” Center for Science in the Public Interest, (January 14, 2009). http://www.cspinet.org/new/200901141.html