The KFC is getting KO’d in Russia. Yum Brands is selling its franchises in Russia to companies who already own stores, and they are all being rebranded and called “Rostic’s.”
After this big move, Yum! Brands will no longer exist in Russia, and the reason, of course, is the invasion of Ukraine. It’s a trend for restaurants. McDonald’s sold their 850 stores, and Starbucks closed its 130 locations.
Rostic’s was formed by a Venezuelan migrant named Rotislav Ordovsky-Tanaevsky Blanco, which does not exactly roll off the tongue like “Colonel Sanders.”
Will the chicken still be “finger-licking good?” You’d have to go to Russia to find out for yourself. It would be next to impossible to find a single volunteer to do that.
Actually, the new owners know that they shouldn’t mess with the menu too much, and they plan on honoring the Colonel’s legacy by staying with what has worked.
Here’s what a source told the Russian news source TASS.
“The legacy menu will remain as much as possible; recipes will not change. Nothing will disappear among favorites.”
The loss of revenue in Russia will ding financials for Yum! Brands a little bit. They say Russia and Ukraine accounted for 2% of total revenues in 2021, so pushing a few extra buckets of chicken per customer in the U.S. should make that up.
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