Park Succeeds Clay Johnson, Who Will Continue as a Senior Advisor

LOUISVILLE, KY / ACCESSWIRE / January 18, 2024 / Yum! Brands
Yum! Brands

Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM) announced the promotion of Joe Park to Chief Digital & Technology Officer, reporting to Chris Turner, Yum! Brands Chief Financial Officer, effective March 1, 2024. Park, who most recently served as Chief Digital & Technology Officer for Pizza Hut Global, succeeds Clay Johnson, who will continue with Yum! Brands as a Senior Advisor. As CDTO, Park will join the Yum! Brands Global Leadership Team and oversee the Company's global technology strategy, partnering with the KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and the Habit Burger Grill divisions to ensure the Company provides a best-in-class digital experience for customers and restaurant team members and strong economics for franchisees.

"We're ingraining digital and technology into all aspects of our business with exciting new capabilities that make things easy for customers and restaurant team members, while driving profitable growth for Yum! and our franchisees," said Turner. "We've made great progress enhancing digital ordering, implementing technologies to improve restaurant operations, leveraging data to enable smart decision-making and piloting emerging technologies, and Joe Park has been an exceptional partner on this journey over the past few years. Joe is an energizing and visionary leader with a proven track record of rapidly deploying modern eCommerce and data platforms and scaling innovative technologies like Dragontail and HutBot across Pizza Hut's global system. I'm confident that Joe will help Yum! continue to strengthen our technology ecosystem and scale our digital solutions at a rapid pace to deliver leading-edge capabilities to our franchisees with advantaged economics."

Yum!'s strategy is to own differentiated technology platforms tailored for each brand and market that enable Easy Experiences for customers, Easy Operations for restaurant teams and Easy Insights to drive outsized growth. In 2022, Yum! Brands reached a new high of $24 billion in digital sales - doubling its digital business since 2019 - demonstrating the power of its digital ecosystem and capabilities of its brands to meet changing consumer needs around the world. Yum! Brands' digital sales continue on a trajectory toward the next milestone of achieving $30 billion in annual digital sales.

Park joined Yum! Brands in 2020 as its first Chief Innovation Officer and has served as Chief Digital and Technology Officer for Pizza Hut Global since 2021. In his most recent role, Park was responsible for leading omnichannel customer experiences, e-commerce and restaurant technologies for more than 19,000 Pizza Hut restaurants in more than 100 countries. At Pizza Hut, Park oversaw the rollout of Dragontail's AI-based platform for optimizing and managing the entire food preparation process from order through delivery, and HutBot, Pizza Hut's "coach-in-your-pocket" app for managers, both of which have been deployed in thousands of restaurants across multiple markets. In his previous role as Chief Innovation Officer for Yum! Brands, Park led the development of emerging technologies, including leveraging artificial intelligence and automation to streamline operations in the Company's restaurant kitchens and enhance the experience for team members and customers. Prior to joining Yum! Brands, Park held executive leadership positions at Walmart and GE. At Walmart, Park was VP of Associate Digital Experience and Enterprise Architecture, overseeing 2,000 employees and providing technology to the largest private sector workforce in the world, modernizing platforms, digitizing processes and transforming user experiences.

"I'm incredibly excited to continue working with the talented and dedicated digital and technology team members around the world, and to partner with our world-class franchisees to execute the company's global technology strategy," said Park. "I'm grateful to have worked alongside Clay Johnson at Yum! Brands since 2020 and look forward to continuing to help the Company drive its initiatives to deliver a best-in-class digital experience for customers and restaurant team members alike."

"In the past few years, we have elevated the Company's digital strategy, working with our brand technology teams in combination with Yum!'s digital and technology teams, both creating and acquiring a distinctive set of technology capabilities and driving tremendous growth in our digital sales," Turner added. "We are grateful for all that Clay has done during that time and we appreciate that he will be continuing in the role as a senior advisor to our company."

About Yum! Brands
Yum! Brands, Inc., based in Louisville, Kentucky, and its subsidiaries franchise or operate a system of over 57,000 restaurants in more than 155 countries and territories under the company's concepts - KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and the Habit Burger Grill. The Company's KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut brands are global leaders of the chicken, Mexican-style food, and pizza categories, respectively. The Habit Burger Grill is a fast casual restaurant concept specializing in made-to-order chargrilled burgers, sandwiches and more. In addition, in 2023 Yum! Brands was included on the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index; Dow Jones Sustainability Index North America; Forbes' list of America's Best Employers for Diversity; TIME Magazine's list of Best Companies for Future Leaders; and Newsweek's lists recognizing America's Most Responsible Companies, America's Greatest Workplaces for Diversity, America's Greenest Companies and America's Greatest Workplaces for Women.

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SOURCE: Yum! Brands