Want To Text Your Food Order? Yum! Brands Acquires Tictuk For Solution

Yum! Brands, Inc. YUM — the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and The Habit Burger — wants customers to text orders to any of its brands.

What Happened: As restaurants continue to reopen across the U.S. and the world, restaurant chains are looking for new and innovative ways to fulfill orders.

Yum! Brands is betting on a new initiative that lets customers send an order to a store through traditional text messages, Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.

To facilitate the new initiative, Yum! Brands announced Wednesday the acquisition of Tictuk Technologies. The Israel-based tech company specializes in conversational commerce allowing customers to interact with brands through chat channels.

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Why It's Important: Tictuk's platform for the restaurant industry includes online ordering capabilities along with chat abilities and marketing technology to engage with customers. The platform directly connects with existing payment systems and can work for in-restaurant dining, delivery and curbside pickup.

Yum! is active in the M&A space and recently announced an agreement to acquire an artificial intelligence-based consumer insights and marketing company, Kvantum.

What's Next: The acquisition fits in with Yum!'s focus on leveraging recent momentum in the digital channel throughout 2020. Digital sales across all brands rose 45% year-over-year to $17 billion.

"The right technologies will allow us to better serve customers with the best offer and delicious food in a way that's most convenient for them," said Chris Turner, CFO of Yum! Brands.

"We're excited about the opportunity Tictuk presents, as their solution delivers high impact by enabling our brands to achieve a truly omnichannel presence and provide frictionless ordering for customers in just a few clicks."

(Photo by Meghan Schiereck on Unsplash)