The World's Largest Restaurant Company Owns 61,000 Chains

We live in a world where a handful of major corporations own much of what we consume, from media and entertainment to the food we eat. When it comes to restaurants, ownership isn't always obvious, but a little digging uncovers one parent company that holds the purse strings to a truly shocking amount of common chains — Yum! Brands. 

You may not know the name, but you certainly know the subsidiary brands under Yum!'s massive portfolio. The corporation owns and operates several restaurant chains, including Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Habit Burger Grill, and KFC (and its famous finger-licking good chicken). So, when you're ordering one of Taco Bell's best seller menu items, just know you're soon getting a taste of Yum! Brands too. 

With these four chains alone, Yum!'s reach totals more than 61,000 restaurant locations across over 155 countries and territories. This makes the brand the largest restaurant group in the world. That is a truly impressive title, with staggering numbers to match, but Yum! Brands isn't satisfied yet. The company has strong growth and expansion goals that are continuing to drive its strategy forward each year.

It's not uncommon for businesses to merge. (This is when one company buys another and absorbs the other's brands into its own portfolio.) For example, the company that owns Jersey Mike's also owns Tropical Smoothie. A similar thing happened with Yum! Brands.

Before Yum! ever existed, Frito-Lay of chip fame merged with PepsiCo. With this merger, PepsiCo found a growing appetite for expanding beyond just drinks, and continued to scoop up brands like Taco Bell, KFC, and eventually, Pizza Hut. The folks at PepsiCo soon designated a new company to oversee the expanding food wing of its portfolio, and in 1997, Tricon Global Restaurants was born. This branch that would ultimately be rebranded to the far catchier Yum! Brands in the early 2000s. Nowadays, the company operates independently of PepsiCo. 

While Yum! Brands operates as its own entity, with a global footprint on par with giants like McDonald's and Starbucks, the day-to-day running of its chains is almost entirely done by franchisees. That is to say, it's not really Yum! that's operating your local Taco Bell, but franchise owners. (In almost all cases.) With a new restaurant opening on average every two hours (yes, really), you're bound to be within driving distance of a Yum! restaurant, or three, whether you realize it or not.