David Gibbs, the CEO of Pizza Hut parent company Yum! Brands, believes his work for the quick-service restaurant giant is done. Now he’s planning to step down in the first quarter of 2026.
Gibbs took over as CEO at the end of 2019. Yum! Brands’ board of directors said it has created a committee that “will work deliberately to identify and appoint the best candidate to lead the company’s next chapter.”
In a statement, Gibbs said, “I set out to strengthen and broaden the appeal of our iconic brands, build industry-leading digital capabilities, dramatically accelerate the pace of profitable unit development and amplify our people-first culture. I am pleased with the progress we have made on all fronts and know that Yum! Brands is now stronger and more resilient than ever.”
After serving as Yum! Brands’ CFO, president/COO and chief strategy officer, Gibbs, who also had a stint as Pizza Hut’s CEO, stepped into the top Yum! Brands role just a couple of months before the COVID-19 pandemic began. To ensure that the company’s general managers could all receive $1,000 bonuses, he forfeited his base salary of about $900,000 that year. He also pledged $3 million in donations to nonprofits supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, then expanded that to $100 million over five years through the Unlocking Opportunity Initiative.
Gibbs also oversaw Yum! Brands’ adoption of technologies like Dragontail, an AI platform aimed at optimizing and managing the entire food preparation process from order through delivery. Dragontail and another tech solution, Tictuk, were later rolled into the new Byte by Yum platform to boost digital sales. In early March 2025, Yum! Brands also added a partnership with Nvidia, the world’s largest chip maker, to enhance its AI capabilities.
As Gibbs explained in Yum! Brands’ Q1 2024 earnings call, “When we move people to digital ordering, we see an uplift in check in almost every case, whether it’s kiosk or online. When we move people to things like Dragontail…for Pizza Hut, we know we get a four-minute savings on delivery time of pizzas, and we know we can get drivers up to deliver more orders per hour by using it.”
In 2024, Yum!, whose brands also include Taco Bell, KFC and Habit Burger & Grill, opened 4,535 new stores in more than 100 countries, bringing the total to 61,000-plus restaurants in more than 155 countries.
