Pizza Hut has had negative same-store sales in nearly half the quarters since 2008. | Photo: Shutterstock.
Yum Brands, the owner of fast-food chains Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut and Habit Burger, reports earnings on Wednesday morning. There’s a good chance we’ll know then about the company’s plans for Pizza Hut.
It seems a good bet to be sold. Last week, Yum Brands CEO Chris Turner suggested as much in an interview for a Yahoo Finance podcast. You can check out the podcast here, but it’s this clip we want to highlight:
Interesting to hear why Yum! Brands has decided to put the iconic Pizza Hut chain up for sale.
You def remember those PH red roofs + all you can eat pizza buffet!
(v/@YahooFinance Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast)
📈 Yahoo Finance: https://t.co/nE0kXEkiGe
Spotify:… pic.twitter.com/ycOJSB86K8— Brian Sozzi (@BrianSozzi) April 23, 2026
“That’s one of the options that we will consider,” Turner said of a sale. “Because we do believe some bold moves need to be made. There’s likely going to need to be investment in the brand. There may need to be some ownership of stores. So there’s a lot of work to be done.
“Now, some of those things are things that Yum typically doesn’t do. You know, I talk about being an asset-light company, and taking on and owning more stores to transform the asset base. That’s just something we historically have not done. It’s not part of our business model.”
And so, we have the biggest barrier between Yum Brands and truly fixing Pizza Hut: Owning stores.
As a reminder, Pizza Hut is one of the three brands, along with KFC and Taco Bell, that were spun off of PepsiCo in 1997 to form what would become Yum Brands. Pizza Hut over the past two decades has stagnated, ultimately losing its status as the world’s largest pizza chain to Domino’s, which today is nearly twice its size. By this time next year Little Caesars will likely be larger than Pizza Hut, at least in the U.S.
Yum last year announced that it was considering strategic alternatives for its pizza brand, which is typically corporate speak for “we’re putting this company on the market and will sell it unless the offers aren’t good enough.”
Turner’s comments suggest that the option to keep the brand would be too expensive and run afoul of Yum’s asset-light strategy.
That is not surprising, and in some respects it is understandable. The business of selling franchises, which is what Yum primarily does, is far more profitable than is the business of running restaurants. Outside of Taco Bell, none of its concepts are profitable enough at the store level to run more locations.
Investors for years have pushed companies into this franchising mentality.
That strategy, however, runs in direct contrast with the one used by Restaurant Brands International, which has invested upwards of $2 billion to fix Burger King in the U.S. and China. In addition to investments in marketing and remodel incentives, the company bought the 1,000-unit Carrols and is remodeling stores and selling them to franchisees.
But even though RBI has demonstrated some success in operating Burger King restaurants, it, too, is not interested in operating them over the long term and is selling them quickly to franchisees.
Yet if Yum does indeed opt to sell Pizza Hut, that would be an unfortunate result of the past 20-plus years. Much of Pizza Hut’s problems are self-inflicted as Yum spent years trend-chasing rather than focusing on the brand’s strengths.
Pizza Hut shifted away from its old “red roof” full-service model to takeout-and-delivery, rather than try to make that red roof model work in the new reality. Pizza Hut might have been better off holding onto that full-service model while courting carryout and delivery customers.
Yum toyed around with cobranding Pizza Hut with KFC, Taco Bell and even Long John Silver’s and A&W, which Yum owned for about a decade. In 2014 Pizza Hut engineered a menu overhaul that featured new crust flavors like “Ginger Boom Boom” that did not remotely resonate with consumers, forcing a shift just a few months later. The franchisee of 20% of its units filed for bankruptcy in 2020 with too much debt. The chain has had four brand presidents since 2021.
Pizza Hut has had more stops and starts than a crash-filled Daytona 500.
Since 2008, nearly half of the quarterly same-store sales that Pizza Hut reported were negative. Today, a typical Pizza Hut generates 56% of the volumes of a typical Domino’s. It is closing stores. And the CEO of Domino’s, Russ Weiner, on Monday quite literally dared its longtime rival to discount more.
“I know the kind of volumes that need to be done in order to make deals like the ones we have out there profitable,” Weiner said, as relayed by my colleague Alicia Kelso. “I do not believe our competition can drive those kinds of volumes because our advertising budget is as big as the two biggest competitors combined.”
Yum Brands may certainly dust off its hands and walk away from Pizza Hut after all this time. And in reality, after so many failed efforts, maybe that really is the best thing for the brand.
