Delivery Will Drive Yum Brands Sales at KFC and Taco Bell

Yum Bands KFC unit understands food delivery, and can do it very well according to Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® as regular readers of this blog know.   KFC Canada has offered food delivery for a long time, in fact KFC Canada in during the 1990’s and early 2,000’s KFC Canada regularly reported delivery sales of 20 percent per year according to our Grocerant Guru®.

 

Yum Brands CEO Greg Creed is still relatively new in his position but he is making changes that are good according to our own Grocerant Guru® from spinning off / out China to delivery.  In fact this spring during conference call with analysts Creed stated “that its delivery business usually grows at a ‘faster rate’ than its main business.”… Creed went on "The great thing about buckets of chicken, it holds its temperature incredibly well."

KFC has started testing delivery in Los Angeles and San Francisco will be able to have food delivered. KFC said it expects to expand the delivery service into Houston by the end of this year. In all, KFC expects 100 restaurants to offer delivery before it decides to expand the service. There are more than 4,300 U.S. KFC restaurants.

The KFC delivery test we believe is the direct result from the Taco Bell experiment with delivery that began this past July.  Now you don’t have leave your couch next time you crave a chalupa or KFC Chicken Tenders.  Taco Bells tested delivery with DoorDash at some 200 stores in their Dallas, Los Angeles, Orange County, Calif., and San Francisco Bay area markets.

The one weak spot for Yum Brands according to our Grocerant Guru® is Pizza Hut.  While Pizza Hut does delivery well they sure missed the mark on marketing the past three years if year over year sales and customer counts were a metric.  

What’s even more disappointing is this Holiday seasons Pizza Hut TV Commercial, Pizza Hut's Holiday Gift: Michael Bolton Under the Mistletoe.  It is a great commercial with a ‘halo of good will’ but once again Pizza Hut’s marketing team seems not to understand today’s consumers or the retail environment according to our Grocerant Guru®.

We wonder how in our Omni-channel retail world the marketing executive team at Pizza Hut  after creating new commercial featuring Michael Bolton singing Holiday classic they failed include the Michael Bolton album in the mix and match Triple Treat Box?  What were they thinking?  Do they not know that McDonald’s sells more toys than any other retailer in the world?  Do they not know that Starbucks continued industry leadership success is based on an Omni-channel retail product platform? 

Success does leave clues and we hope Pizza Hut will gather a few new clues.   Let me know what you think should they have added the album?   

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