Editor’s note: This article draws on insights from a May CIO Dive and CX Dive virtual event. You can watch the sessions on-demand.
Yum Brands’ history with technology goes back decades — 32 years, to the first-ever online restaurant order made via Pizza Hut’s PizzaNet.
But much of the Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut parent company’s digital strategy has been developed in just the last few years, its tech leader Jim Dausch said during Wednesday’s CIO and CX Dive virtual event on how AI is reshaping the enterprise. In 2019, only 1% of Taco Bell’s sales were digital, compared with 70% in 2026, Dausch said.
“Digital has become an enormous part of our business,” he said. “And so, of course, the technology that powers that is also a critical part of our business.”
Dausch transitioned roles in September to include president of Byte by Yum, the restaurant brand’s SaaS platform of AI-driven tools for customers, processes and internal teams. He also holds the role of Yum’s chief digital and technology officer, after having spent a year as global chief digital and technology officer of Pizza Hut.
Yum Brands spent much of 2025 rolling out AI tools to more of its restaurants, as it further built its AI strategy. It also partnered with tech giants, such as AWS, Microsoft and Nvidia, which it used to deploy voice AI agents, and built out its proprietary platform to become more AI focused.
“Yum really was [convinced] that future industry leadership in the restaurant industry was going to be determined by technology,” Dausch said.
Modernization efforts
AI is a “new and powerful technology” that can provide greater intelligence and real-time evolution and performance on top of the company’s existing tech stack, Dausch said. Because it had a decades-old technology foundation, the company began modernization efforts just before the COVID-19 pandemic for its more than 60,000 restaurants.
Byte by Yum was the company’s answer, an AI backbone behind the restaurants’ digital ordering platform, point of sale, kitchen delivery, back of house, inventory management and other core systems that Dausch said had been previously fragmented. It’s paired with the consumer-facing app that allows associates to provide personalized experiences at restaurants.
Creating one common data model across all of the brand’s systems so data flows more seamlessly was essential, Dausch said, especially as some of the brands are more than 60 years old.
“The starting point was a very fragmented data estate,” Dausch said. “It was for us, not only getting all of the data in one place, but also that all of the data means the same things across all of our systems and all of our markets. Those were the two most critical things we had to tackle.”
The Byte software is now used in more than 35,000 restaurants in 150 countries, and its digital ordering platform is in 18,000 restaurants and has processed about $20 billion in sales, Dausch said.
The company’s internal AI strategy is three-fold, according to Dausch. It’s aimed at driving higher speed of innovation and enterprise productivity, driving customer growth by embedding AI in traditional customer acquisition, conversion and retention lifecycle, and embedding AI within restaurants to simplify operations and to improve unit economics for franchisees.
Dausch said the company is measuring ROI by looking at improvement in top-line sales, margins or costs, and if they’re positively affecting the customer or team member experience. The third case is harder to measure, he said.
“If we can take … some of the administrative or task-oriented burden from them, and if in doing that, they can then move some of that activity toward taking better care of our guests, that leads to better customer satisfaction,” he said.
Dausch said it’s easy to forget that AI is just one part of their overall business strategy and reminded other tech leaders not to lose sight of the real problems or outcomes a business is trying to solve.
“AI, at the end of the day, in my view, is still just a tool, as is the rest of technology,” Dausch said. “We focus on delivering great food at great value with great service to our customers. That’s the business that we’re in.”
