Yum! Brands Inc. of Louisville, Kentucky, the owner of the KFC and Taco Bell fast-food chains, will spend $10 billion over the next seven years adding restaurants in emerging markets to tap increasing demand for eating out.
The investments will help Yum increase its outlets in these countries to more than 20,000, Chief Executive Officer David Novak said. The company, which opened its 40,000th store in Calangute Beach, Goa, India, said sales from its own and franchise outlets in India will reach $1 billion by 2015. “We’re on the ground floor of global growth in a lot of countries, particularly the emerging markets,” Novak said, speaking in Goa. “In the United States, for instance, we have 58 restaurants for every million people. In emerging markets, it is two.”
The fast-food company gets less than 1 percent of its revenue from India, where CLSA said the market for restaurant chains will grow to $6.5 billion by 2018. Yum is developing menus in India to cater to local tastes, said Novak. It sells rice balls with curry flavor and chicken that’s spicy, he said.
