Digital commerce is big business in Yum Brands Inc., operator of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell fast food restaurants.

Now the company, which does $30 billion annually in digitally enabled sales, has a new chief digital officer.

Yum promoted Joe Park to chief digital and technology officer. In the new role, he reports to Chris Turner, Yum Brands chief financial officer, effective March 1, 2024.

Yum’s new chief digital officer

Park most recently served as chief digital and technology officer for Pizza Hut Global. In his upgraded capacity, he succeeds Clay Johnson, who will continue with Yum Brands as a senior advisor.

As chief digital and technology officer, Park will join the Yum Brands global leadership group. He will lead the company’s global technology strategy, partnering with the KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and the Habit Burger Grill divisions to ensure “a best-in-class digital experience for customers and restaurant team members and strong economics for franchisees,” Yum says.

Park joined Yum 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 led omnichannel customer experiences, ecommerce 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, Park led the development of emerging technologies, including leveraging artificial intelligence and automation to streamline operations in the company’s restaurant kitchens.

Before joining Yum Brands, Park held executive leadership positions at Walmart and GE. At Walmart, Park was vice president of associate digital experience and enterprise architecture, overseeing 2,000 employees.

Yum 2023 results

In 2023, Yum grew digitally enabled sales to $30 billion, CEO David Gibbs told analysts on a recent earnings call. “Along with the record-breaking success we’ve had on development, our digital strategy has helped propel top-line results and improve bottom-line profits,” he said. “Digital sales approached $30 billion in 2023, up 22% year over year, with mix now exceeding 45%. At the same time, we have accelerated the deployment of our proprietary technologies to optimize back-of-house operations and make it easier to run our restaurants.”

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