Building AI Capabilities: Yum! Brands

This is the first in a series of three short cases that profile how companies built their AI capabilities ("Building AI Capabilities: Yum! Brands," UVA-M-1068; "Building AI Capabilities: Flipkart," UVA-M-1069; and "Building AI Capabilities: CFA Institute," UVA-M-1070). This public-sourced case focuses on Yum! Brands (Yum), the parent company of fast-food franchises Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut. Yum&apos;s AI journey began with its 2015 acquisition of Collider Lab, a consultancy that provided insights into consumer behavior. In 2021, Yum acquired additional companies to deepen its AI and performance marketing capabilities, and over the next few years, it began implementing the acquired AI technologies in select franchises. The case concludes by highlighting Yum&apos;s plans to implement customer-facing AI tools, including personalized marketing text messages and AI-driven voice ordering at its restaurants.<p>Excerpt</p><p>Building AI Capabilities: Yum! Brands</p><p>Founded in 1997, Yum! Brands, Inc. (Yum), was the parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and the Habit Burger Grill. In 2025, more than 1 million people worked for Yum or its franchises, and the company estimated that a new restaurant opened somewhere in the world every two hours.</p><p>Yum began laying the groundwork for its AI journey in 2015, when it acquired Collider Lab (Collider), an in-house consultancy that focused on consumer insights and marketing strategy. Collider employed a team of anthropologists and sociologists to study the cultural components of consumer behavior. Meanwhile, the company collected customer data through various digital channels. Data points included audio recordings of drive-through orders, television footage of cars in restaurants&apos; drive-through lanes, point-of-sale data, location of purchase, customers&apos; previous purchase behaviors, and purchase patterns by time of day. By 2021, the company had assembled data on trillions of transactions. Chief Marketing Officer Ken Muench remarked, “We&apos;re watching very, very carefully, as consumer behavior starts changing, and we adapt very fast.”</p><p>. . .</p>