99% franchised globally; U.S. system dominated by large legacy operators such as KBP Brands.
Consumer Demand has not been republished since YE2025. It keeps its published value here — CSW does not roll a figure forward — and the rankings page lists every overdue input.
KFC U.S. is shrinking and improving at the same time, which is not a contradiction — it is what a portfolio cleanup looks like. The chain has closed more than 300 U.S. restaurants in twelve months and ended 2025 at 3,523 units, but has also strung together three consecutive quarters of positive same-store sales after seven negative ones, with roughly +2% in the most recent quarter. Yum is doing what a franchisor does when the tail of the system is uneconomic: cull the weak boxes, move the U.S. team to Texas, and put the menu back on the parts of the bird the market actually wants (boneless, wings, sauce). The strategic risk is that KFC is now a 3,500-unit U.S. brand supporting the marketing weight of a 34,000-unit global brand, and the American franchisee base bears the fixed costs while international carries the growth.
Cap rate
Franchisee QSR benchmark 6.85% (Q2 2026); older, shorter-term KFC assets trade wider4
KFC is the single largest source of second-generation chicken real estate in America right now. More than 300 U.S. locations closed in the twelve months ending July 2026, and the typical asset is an older freestanding box — often with a drive-thru, frequently in an infill trade area that has been proven for chicken for thirty years. That inventory is where conversions, redevelopments and mispriced land basis get created.
| Date | Type | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-07 to 2026-07 | Closure | United States (312) — 312 U.S. restaurants permanently closed in twelve months — 7.64% of the American footprint.3 |
| 2025 | Closure | United States (161) — 161 U.S. closures against 15 openings; U.S. count fell from 3,669 to 3,523.1 |
| 2026-Q1 | Closure | United States (46) — 46 additional closures in the first quarter of 2026.1 |
Swipe the table to see more columns →
What it means for the Chicken Wars: 312 closures between July 2025 and July 2026 — 7.64% of the American footprint. Read it as inventory, not obituary: three hundred freestanding, drive-thru-equipped boxes in trade areas that have supported chicken for decades just came back to the market, most of them controlled by legacy franchisees with no interest in redevelopment.
What it means for the Chicken Wars: Three consecutive quarters of positive comps after seven negative ones, on the back of spicy wings and returning potato wedges. KFC is finally competing on the parts of the bird the market actually wants instead of defending the bucket. The turnaround is real — it is just happening across 3,523 restaurants instead of 3,669.
What it means for the Chicken Wars: Roughly 100 corporate roles relocating over six months, 90 remote roles over 18. Symbolically, the brand most identified with a single American state left it. Practically, it consolidates KFC U.S. alongside KFC Global and Pizza Hut Global in Plano — and puts the U.S. team in the same metro as a large share of its franchisee base.
Every figure on this page is attributed. CSW does not publish estimates as facts — where a number is unavailable it is shown as “—”, and where a figure is derived arithmetically from two published figures it is marked as derived.