What happened when the world’s largest restaurant company gathered 30-plus chefs and gave them absolute freedom

Image provided by Yum! Brands.

This month, over 30 chefs, product developers and marketers met at the Taco Bell Restaurant Support Center. One was once asked to be a contestant on Master Chef, another was pals with Anthony Bourdain and many boasted culinary degrees from the world's top institutions. They collectively spoke 10 languages.

The group came together on behalf of Yum! Brands, parent to KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Habit Burger & Grill. But the world's largest restaurant company didn't just hire outside consultants to cook up new menu items - although they sometimes partner with supplier chefs. These participants are current employees. Hailing from Australia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and beyond, they gathered for BrandSpark, a new event with one goal: food innovation with no guardrails.

"This is the exhilarating thing about BrandSpark," said Taco Bell Chief Food Innovation Officer Liz Matthews, whose team organized the event. "We could create the next big thing, or we could create nothing. There's zero expectation - just the freedom to ideate. What is guaranteed is that post event, we'll have connected as a community and will be ready to support each other as we grow our brands."

That long, proverbial runway led to cross-brand collaboration. The group was divided into four teams - one representing each brand - with representatives from the brands on each team. They all had the same challenge: In three days, they were to recreate an existing limited time offering (LTO) and craft a brand-new menu item. The third option was a food innovation of their own choice.

In the end, their cuisine rivaled anything served at a Michelin-rated restaurant, but these culinary creations weren't the star of BrandSpark - the learnings were.

Inspiration From Everything, Everywhere and All at Once

BrandSpark kicked off with a food immersion tour hosted by Solina, a partner of all four brands that won the top recognition at the company's recent supplier awards show. Participants sampled fried chicken with caviar at French bistro Populaire, consumed spoonfuls of elote from Los Reyes Del Elote Asado food truck, sipped boba teas from 3Cat, finished every last crumb of churros from El Moro inside Mercado Gonzalez at Northgate Market and tasted pizzas from Michelin-star restaurant Sugo. They noted the flavors and presentation style of each restaurant, vowing to incorporate pieces of it into their creations on the final day.

Day two marked the first time in the kitchens, but before the teams unpacked their supplies, they learned about how culture was influencing consumers' taste preferences from Yum!'s in-house marketing agency, Collider. Strategists Chase Skelton and Jessika Gomez-Duarte demonstrated how eating habits are shaped by global pop culture trends, new technology like artificial intelligence and societal change. The team highlighted three emerging global cravings to inspire the chefs' exploration.

Inspired by the immersion and Collider, each chef worked in tandem. Kitchens weren't on lock down; they were open. Everyone was walking in and out of the other's spaces, sharing ingredients and equipment, even asking for advice on how to prepare a dish.

"For me, the highlight was in the kitchen, when it was one big Yum! kitchen," said Pizza Hut Global Food Innovation Officer Rachel Antalek. "Lots of hip bumping, tasting, spoon dipping - the energy was electric!"

Side Conversations Get Main Event Treatment

Between shouts of "Yes, chef!" and sampling bites, participants got to know each other, sharing photos of their Borzoi pups, personal quests for Labubu toys and ways of working. The latter, many participants said, was the best part of the experience.

Jo Tivers, KFC Regional FIT lead for Europe, United Kingdom and Ireland, specializing in the United Kingdom, swapped contacts for a marketing partnership with her counterpart, Ana Maria Basurto, KFC Regional FIT lead for the Americas, and KFC Regional FIT lead for the Asia and SOPAC Lindsay Beukes discussed mentorship opportunities across markets and brands with Antalek. Inspired by the food immersion, Basurto and Pizza Hut Senior Manager of Culinary Innovation Brian Campell have discussed going on joint culinary tours in Plano, Texas, as the KFC and Pizza Hut global teams are based there.

"Yum! is the world's largest restaurant company, and thanks to BrandSpark, we have the opportunity to leverage our scale and bring some of the most creative minds in our business together to collaborate and ideate for the future of our brands," said Kavi Morgan, KFC Regional FIT lead for the Middle East, India and Africa. "I already have plans to look at how we can take some of the ideation tools and processes I learned from each of the brands and create best practices for our business units. The in-person collaboration and tangible impact from face-to-face conversations have been a huge unlock for us all."

Parting Words From the Yum! CEO: "Be Unreasonable."

The last morning, BrandSpark participants watched a livestream of a company-wide townhall. On it, Food Innovation leads from each brand talked about the event, enlightening the company base to the magic unfolding in Irvine, California.

It also happened to be the last townhall for David Gibbs, the company's CEO who is moving into an advisory role on October 1. The executive, who'd started with the company in 1989, left employees with several pieces of advice - one of them: "Be unreasonable."

"If that makes you stop and pay attention, it should," Gibbs said, elaborating that he would like the Yum! employee base to push more bold ideas forward, taking calculated risks and reframing their relationships with failure.

It's this kind of mindset that produces events like Live Más LIVE, according to Taco Bell CEO & Yum! Chief Consumer Officer Sean Tresvant, who also spoke to participants on their final day. Live Más LIVE is the annual event announcing Taco Bell's innovations for the upcoming year, but it would never have gotten off the ground without executives' support, he said, harkening to the Yum! spirit, which Gibbs summarized as "be unreasonable."

For the BrandSpark teams, this was what they needed to hear. For the past three days, they'd crafted menu items never before served at a KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell or Habit Burger & Grill, while staying true to each brand's identity. And they were able to do this because of the no rules rule of BrandSpark. The only requirement was to dream, and now, the group is dreaming of the next BrandSpark in 2026 - possibly in Sydney, Australia, or Plano, Texas.

As KFC Global Chief Food Innovation Officer Sebastian Wright implored, "Please take this energy back with you to your brands. I think this is what it's all about - a spark - and a spark ignites a fire."