Yum Brands transferred ownership of all its Russian Pizza Hut franchisee assets to a local operator last month. The new owner of the units will rebrand the restaurants to non-Yum entities, the company said Tuesday.
Yum is also in “advanced stages” of handing off its Russian KFC restaurants, operating system and master franchise rights to a local operator. Once the KFC transaction is complete, Yum will officially exit the Russian market.
In March, Yum — which operated 50 Pizza Hut Units and roughly 1,000 KFC units in Russia — announced it had halted all business activity in the country and was finalizing an agreement to cease its Pizza Hut operations there. At that time, Yum had also temporarily closed 70 of its Russia KFC stores.
At the start of the year, Yum’s Russian business made up less than 2% of is global restaurant store count, according to Seeking Alpha. The company’s Russia, Central & Eastern Europe markets represented 8% of KFC system sales last year, or a 35% jump over 2020. It’s unknown how many workers were employed by Yum in Russia.
These ownership transfers build on the company’s previous commitments to funnel profits from its Russian operations to humanitarian efforts, Yum said in a statement.
This news follows McDonald’s exit from the market, which took place in May, with a sale to an existing licensee. Those locations have since been rebranded.
