Several single-unit franchise operators will graduate this week from a unique professional development program, created by the Yum! Center for Global Franchise Excellence at the University of Louisville. The participants are part of the Accelerating Growth, Unit Expansion – the center’s third such cohort – and each hope to grow their leadership, using what they’ve learned as a roadmap for multi-unit expansion. For six months, the professionals have attended online classes, taken assessments and crafted a 100-day plan outlining how they would manage several restaurants in a new market.

These graduates are a testament to the center that has evolved tremendously since its inception in 2021. It now offers the aforementioned professional education certificate as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees.

“We want people to understand that the sky’s the limit in franchising,” said Yum! Center for Global Franchise Excellence Director Kathleen Gosser, who has a doctorate in Educational Leadership & Organizational Development.

So far, Gosser and her team have had the opportunity to demonstrate franchising’s unlimited potential to hundreds of students, including 650 undergraduates who have enrolled in the franchise courses.

Ten of those are attending the university with financial aid thanks to a new initiative called Yum! Scholars. Launched in fall 2025 with a $1 million endowment from Yum! Brands, the program offers Kentucky-based students financial support, by way of $1,000 each semester for up to four years, as well as mentorship and hands-on experience with franchise organizations. Currently there are five sophomores and five juniors, but in fall 2026, the program will expand to include five freshmen, for a total of 15, with the goal of 20 for a full cohort in 2027.

“The concept is they have to have some interest in franchising,” Gosser said. “But they don’t have to be a business major, and that’s the beauty of it. We allow students to explore the world of franchising because, we believe, it has real world applications.”

Mateo Barrientos, a public health major and Yum! Scholar, can already see those applications just a few months into the program.

“One of my professors and mentors was a business major before becoming a dentist, and he showed me how powerful franchising can be,” he said. “He owned restaurants and dental offices and built a life that balanced passion and independence. That really stuck with me because you can incorporate franchising into almost anything you do. Even in fields like neuroscience or dentistry, franchising teaches you how to build something sustainable and grow your passion. You need that business side to be truly successful in any field.”

While other educational franchising programs exist, the UofL College of Business in affiliation with the Center is the only one that offers certification at undergraduate, graduate and professional levels, and in 2026, the university will be the first to offer a post-doctoral degree focused on franchising. Supported by Associate Professor Denise Cumberland, who has a doctorate in Educational Leadership and Organizational Development and 20 years of experience in franchising, the PhD is an expansion of a current entrepreneurship degree with research that focuses on franchising.

“A PhD focused on franchising is rare, right? No one really has it,” Gosser said. “It’s a bit of a unicorn, but there are so many ways to use it. They could work for a franchisor in any type of capacity.”

All of this advancement has caught the attention of the International Society of Franchising, which has selected the Yum! Center to host its 40^th annual conference in 2027, timed so the program’s PhD students can present their research to attendees.

“This year, the conference was in Cyprus. Next year, it will be in Rome, so it’s a great opportunity for our students. It’s quite an honor to host scholars from around the world focused on franchising,” Gosser said.

But perhaps the greatest honor comes in the form of a recent student who’s now a franchisee. Abby Epperly graduated in the spring and just signed a contract to open a Bad Ass Coffee store with her father. Knowing that a cohort was graduating this week, she gave this advice.

“Books alone don’t prepare you like the real-life education that you get at the Yum! Center for Global Franchise Excellence,” Epperly said. “I am well equipped when I enter conversations with my franchisor and suppliers because I feel as though I’ve already had these same discussions in class.”

The center, she said, has so much that a franchisee could need at any point in their career.

Almost all of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Habit Burger & Grill restaurants are owned and operated by franchisees – 98% of nearly 61,000 locations, to be exact. And over 600 of those franchisees gathered in Sydney, Australia, in April for parent company Yum! Brands’ Global Franchise Convention (GFC), traveling as far as 10,500-plus miles to get there. For four days these franchisees, hailing from every continent but Antarctica, shared knowledge and listened to Yum! and its brands’ leadership outline their plans to continue growing iconic restaurant brands globally.

“This four-day event is two years in the making,” Yum! CEO David Gibbs said. “As the world’s largest restaurant company, our scale is unmatched. No one can do what we do, gathering committed, capable and capitalized partners across the globe to share a vision in building the world’s most loved, trusted and connected restaurant brands.”

Here’s what to expect from KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Habit Burger & Grill and Yum! Brands in 2025 and beyond.

The Power of One

Throughout the four days, executives threw out several figures to illustrate Yum!’s size:

• Yum! purchases 1.7 billion kilograms of poultry each year.
• It spends $1.4 billion on dairy products annually, but that’s less than 10% of the company’s overall spend.
• The company employs over 2,000 Digital & Technology employees, and KFC alone creates 60,000 new jobs every year.

Perhaps the most impressive number was the fact that Yum! spends billions in support of franchisees. This investment comes in the form of several initiatives, including the Yum! Franchise Office, which works to partner with the brands and franchisees across the globe to strengthen Yum!’s franchising foundation – from navigating legal contracts and benchmarking financial success – to the complex issues.

Also part of that spend is Byte by Yum!, a comprehensive collection of proprietary Software as a Service, AI-driven products, which simplifies both operations and the customer experience. Byte is a platform built by operators, for operators, and its support staff works as one cross-functional team to ensure that restaurant teams and engineers collaborate in real time to ensure the best experience for everyone. Since Yum! has developed and owns its own tech stack, the benefits to its franchisees are exponential. As Byte by Yum! President Joe Park said at GFC, “If you have a great idea, put it into Byte, and we’ll roll it out to everyone.”

This collaborative spirit speaks to the power of one Yum!. Since it is the world’s largest restaurant company, its purchasing power for poultry, dairy and other goods is unparalleled, securing the best prices for its partners. Innovation, whether that takes the form of technology, marketing or new menu items, is also shared across all four brands. It’s the reason Yum!’s newest brand, Habit Burger & Grill, has been able to scale so quickly according to CEO Shannon Hennessy, making her new mantra “more magic, more margin.”

Hospitality, Powered by Byte

In February, Yum! announced Byte by Yum!, and at GFC, franchisees got a close-up look. Byte by Yum! President Joe Park identified a clear need for the platform as many restaurant general managers were making decisions based on their experience and intuition. While mainly good, the time it took to make those decisions, he said, could’ve been used to create a better experience for team members and customers.

This echoes what Yum! Chief Marketing Officer Ken Muench said, “The more the world becomes digital, the more we’re going to crave human contact.” It’s also what KFC Global Chief Digital & Technology Officer Judd Knight called “tech-powered hospitality,” automating the mundane so team members can spark joy.

There are Byte by Yum! products in over 25,000 restaurants globally. In the U.S., Yum!'s brands are powered by multiple Byte products, with Byte's digital ordering platform processing more than 300 million transactions annually. 

When Pizza Hut U.S. experienced its busiest day in its history during the NFL’s Big Game, there were no outages thanks to Byte by Yum! Commerce, and this success and these learnings are being shared amongst all four brands, with Taco Bell benefiting from Pizza Hut’s experience with Byte.

“During Taco Bell’s Taco Tuesday promotional launch, we were breaking global Yum! records,” said Yum! Chief Technology Officer Matthew McDole. “I can confidently say that Byte by Yum! powers Taco Tuesday.”

Go Bold or Go Home

While Yum! was founded in 1997, its brands have a longer history, and as Gibbs pointed out, their history is marked by innovation – like, when KFC invented the bucket, evolving quick-service restaurants from a single-use occasion to a group one and when Taco Bell created the phrase “value menu.” Likewise, Pizza Hut is credited with being the first item ordered on the internet in 1994.

That ingenuity is still manifesting today with Taco Bell’s Live Mas Café, Pizza Hut’s latest restaurant design in the U.S. and Yum!’s newest concept Saucy by KFC, which brings together 11 flavored sauces paired with boneless tenders seasoned with the brand’s signature 11 herbs and spices.

KFC has also launched a new line of beverages in the U.K. and Australia called KWENCH by KFC. These lemonades, refreshers, iced coffees and milkshakes are created by new equipment that take up minimal space in the restaurants, are easy to execute for the team members and feature premium textures and tastes for customers looking to treat themselves.

KFC is also transforming with bold marketing as research has shown today’s Gen Z and Alpha consumers have only a 1.3-second attention span before they scroll to the next thing on their smartphones. In Spain, the brand launched a campaign to stand out with the modern consumer by partnering with Netflix’s “Squid Game,” inserting the brand into challenges and creating a “Squid Game” burger that led to the market’s biggest sales day ever. In the U.K., KFC launched The Wing, a social content creation center run by Zoomers that has reached 1 million users in TikTok alone, proving that a legacy brand can attract younger audiences.

The Future Is Connection

By the end of the conference, franchisees had experienced the power of the world’s largest restaurant company and left inspired by Byte by Yum!’s proprietary technology, Yum!’s commitment to elevating both the team member and customer experience and the bold flavors they tasted. Everything was connected and made possible through the power of one Yum!, whose scale can unlock a world of possibilities and ideas, when paired with its franchisees.

“Our franchisees are valued thought partners,” said Yum! Head of Franchising Mike Nilevsky. “They’re risk takers and growth makers who are building our brands, interacting with customers and partnering with us to take bold actions. Together, we’re one Yum!.”