Yum Brands' tech chief drives AI and automation across 63,000 restaurants

When Jim Dausch arrived at Yum Brands in late 2024, he first tackled Pizza Hut’s delivery heat issue by adding a predictive automation layer that holds pizza preparation until a driver is available, leading to hotter deliveries and higher customer scores. Promoted a year later to global chief digital and technology officer, he now directs digital ordering, AI, data and restaurant technology for KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut across 63,000 sites run by about 1,500 franchisees.

Major projects include rolling out digital kiosks to roughly two-thirds of locations, launching a voice-AI ordering system in more than 900 U.S. Taco Bell outlets, and integrating loyalty data into kiosks for personalized offers. Yum’s proprietary SaaS platform, Byte, consolidates ordering, POS, kitchen, delivery and inventory tools, delivering an 85 % drop in stockouts. Dausch emphasizes that franchisees will only adopt new tools when they can prove either a boost in same-store sales or a reduction in food waste that pays for itself, and he remains cautious about costly AI and robotics proposals.