Yum Brands Elevates Joe Park to Chief Digital and Technology Officer

Yum Brands, the parent company to Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, and The Habit Burger Grill, announced the promotion of Joe Park to Chief Digital and Technology officer. He will be reporting to Chris Turner, Yum’s Chief Financial Officer, when his tenure begins on March 1, 2024. 

He succeeds Clay Johnson in his new role. Johnson will continue with the company as a senior advisor.

 Park previously served as Chief digital and technology officer for Pizza Hut Global.

“I’m incredibly excited to continue working with the talented and dedicated digital and technology team members around the world, and to partner with our world-class franchisees to execute the company’s global technology strategy,” said Park in a statement. “I’m grateful to have worked alongside Clay Johnson at Yum! Brands since 2020 and look forward to continuing to help the company drive its initiatives to deliver a best-in-class digital experience for customers and restaurant team members alike.”

Park joined Yum in 2020 as its first Chief Innovation Officer and served as Chief Digital and Technology officer for Pizza Hut Global since 2021. At Pizza Hut, Park oversaw the rollout of Dragontail’s AI-based platform for optimizing and managing the entire food preparation process from order through delivery, and HutBot, Pizza Hut’s “coach-in-your-pocket” app for managers, both of which have been deployed in thousands of restaurants across multiple markets.

Prior to joining Yum Brands, Park held executive leadership positions at Walmart and GE. At Walmart, he was vice president of associate digital experience and enterprise architecture, overseeing 2,000 employees and providing technology to the largest private sector workforce in the world, modernizing platforms, digitizing processes, and transforming user experiences.

Chris Turner in a statement, said:  “We’ve made great progress enhancing digital ordering, implementing technologies to improve restaurant operations, leveraging data to enable smart decision-making and piloting emerging technologies, and Park has been an exceptional partner on this journey over the past few years.   I’m confident that Park will help Yum continue to strengthen our technology ecosystem and scale our digital solutions at a rapid pace to deliver leading-edge capabilities to our franchisees with advantaged economics.”