Dive Brief:
- Yum Brands, the Louisville-based company that owns Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, WingStreet and KFC, will promote Tony Lowings to CEO of its KFC division effective Jan. 1, 2019, according to a company release. Lowings, who was named president and COO of KFC just last August, will succeed current CEO Roger Eaton when he retires at the end of the year.
- Lowings also held several leadership roles in Yum Brands’ international sectors, including managing director of KFC’s Asia-Pacific region and COO of Yum Restaurants International.
- “As a proven and highly respected strategic brand builder, high impact operations leader and people grower, Tony is the perfect person to continue elevating KFC into a distinctive, relevant and easy global brand that people trust and champion,” Yum Brands CEO Greg Creed said in the release. Lowings’ promotion will take effect before Yum Brands' Q4 earnings become public.
Dive Insight:
During his nearly four years as KFC's CEO, Roger Eaton has implemented a series of meaningful shifts for the company. In 2015, he spearheaded a rebrand of the fast food restaurant, followed by an announcement the chain would pivot to antibiotic-free chicken last year. Most recently, Eaton oversaw the company's $200 million investment in mobile takeout food-ordering company GrubHub.
The chicken restaurant's extensive rebranding is perhaps the most notable change under Eaton. With the help of Wieden+Kennedy, KFC embraced a new, irreverent marketing style geared toward millennial consumers. The chain revived Colonel Sanders as its mascot to be played by a rotating cast of celebrities, launched an influencer marketing campaign to promote new sauce and chicken flavors and debuted an original romance novella for Mother’s Day — its biggest sales day of the year. KFC’s “Re-Colonelization” rebrand communicated its renewed dedication to “Colonel-quality chicken," and showed that it had the advertising chops to bring consumer interest back to the beleagured brand, which lost around 40% of its business due to same-store sales declines and store closures between 2007 and 2013.
KFC's 3% stake in GrubHub was another effort under Eaton to appeal to millennial consumers, and a move to meet rising demand for online ordering and efficient food delivery. Staying relevant and delivering on its “Re-Colonelization” promises has also meant pressuring its chicken suppliers to go antibiotic-free by the end of 2018 — both to combat a public health concern about antibiotic-resistant superbugs and to keep in step with privately owned Chick-Fil-A, which is the biggest chain-chicken company by sales in the U.S. (KFC is the second largest).
Lowings takes the reins of the company as KFC reaps the benefits of these innovations and investments, which have already proven lucrative for the chain this year. In Q2 of 2018, KFC’s same-store sales growth was 2% (matching Taco Bell’s, which has long been speculated to be Yum's top earner) and Pizza Hut’s same-store sales saw a 1% decline. In this most recent earnings report, KFC was Yum! Brands’ only division to exceed analysts’ expectations.
Lowings could also use the insights he gained as managing director of KFC's Asia-Pacific region, a high growth area for the fast food chain, to help the restaurant's U.S. division find new paths to growth. According to the company release, Lowings was "instrumental in growing the business and establishing KFC as one of the region’s most distinctive and unique brands" when he served as managing director of KFC's Australia and New Zealand region. It seems likely that Lowings will stay the course that Eaton has positioned the company toward, though how he will contend with growing consumer preference for healthier food offerings and Chik-fil-A's dominance remains an open question.