In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Yum Brands CEO Greg Creed addresses a number of happenings within his company, among them, a divergence in China and how Pizza Hut needs a technological facelift. As a bit of background, Yum Brands Inc. is the owner of fast food chains such as Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC. Creed says that success in China has presented the opportunity for the company to create a spin off company, separate from Yum, that will trade on the New York Stock Exchange. On November 1st the company will do just that. Furthermore, the article transitioned, displaying a piece of an interview transcription between the WSJ and Mr. Creed. He (Greg) mentions that the company's focus is now going to be more on brand building than restaurant running. Additionally, he explained Pizza Hut's recent struggles mentioning that, "[w]e've just made it too hard to get a better pizza" and that people expect the effortlessness of ordering something on Amazon to be just the same for pizza. I recognized an obvious case of McDonaldization on this point, specifically in efficiency. In his 1993 book, The McDonaldization of Society, author George Ritzer points to efficiency as a core value and positive of the fast food model. Thus, he would likely agree that Pizza Hut will need to simplify their online ordering to give people "the best available way to get from being hungry to being full" (13). Moving forward, Creed says they need to invest more in technology to combat this consumer issue. After that, he gave a glimpse into the product-development process in which he said that they venture outside of the food category they are working on for inspiration. Particularly with their cheesy core burritos, for which they spawned from Ben & Jerry's chocolate core ice creams. This reminded one of the example Ritzer uses with the USA TODAY, in which newspapers across the country began to adopt a theme of shorter stories after noticing their success. The interview concluded as Creed explains why Yum is able to compete globally in today's "food-experience" landscape. He knows they are able to work well in this environment because they have scale and understanding of the preferred tastes in each of the 135 countries they operate in.
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