Louisville-based Yum! Brands announced today it plans to sell two of its fast-food brands to focus its energies on the others. There are 1,630 A&W and Long John Silver’s restaurants in Yum’s portfolio of more than 37,000. The rest are Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC locations.
The news, which is making a big splash on the Internet, is simply that the company is looking for buyers. So don’t take down all that signage at the new arena just yet.
The official company word is that the two brands “don’t fit” into the company’s long-term strategy. That sounds like a fancy way of saying the brands were under-performing. It seemed that Yum’s purchase of both brands, which seemed to be heading downhill until Yum’s purchase of the brands in 2002, back when it was known as Tricon.
But no one I know is a big fan of A&W, or root beer, and the attempt to boost the popularity of A&W and Long John’s by combining them in locations with KFCs and Taco Bells apparently is not working.
