Yum Brands to spin off troubled China operations

Hong Kong

YUM Brands, the restaurant company that owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, said on Tuesday that it intended to split its Chinese operations into a separate company. A string of mishaps in China have bedevilled Yum Brands over the last several years, most stemming from problems with its poultry suppliers.

The average sales of a KFC store in China are now US$1.2 million, down from US$1.7 million in 2012, the year the food-safety scandals started to surface. Yum recently replaced the longtime head of its Chinese operations, Sam Su. Micky Pant, who was serving as chief executive of KFC, was assigned the task of turning the China operations around and now will head the spun-off company.