Taco Bell is owned by Yum! Brands (the United States, NYSE: YUM), which was separated from PepsiCo on 6 October 1997.[1][2] Before Yum! Brands, Taco Bell was owned by PepsiCo from 1978 to 1997.[2]
Evidence: Yum! Brands, Inc. Annual Report on Form 10-K filed 2026-02-20, SEC EDGAR, 20 February 2026. Verified from filings; last checked .
Taco Bell was founded in California in 1962 by Glen Bell, who had watched the queues at a Mexican restaurant opposite his hot dog stand and worked out how to make hard-shell tacos quickly. PepsiCo acquired it in 1978 and it moved to Yum in 1997.
Sentences about Taco Bell from Yum! Brands's latest annual filing[1], copied word for word.
Taco Bell The first Taco Bell restaurant was opened in 1962 by Glen Bell in Downey, California, and in 1964, the first Taco Bell franchise was sold.
A plain count of the times the name appears in the text of each annual report, not counting the start of a sentence. A brand that an owner writes about more is usually one it treats as central. The brand is named more often than it was three years earlier.
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
Open the full Yum! Brands ownership tree →
See the full Yum! Brands brand portfolio (4) →
Yum! Brands controls 4 brands on Brandtree, 4 of them in restaurants & foodservice.
The 38 brands in burger & chicken chains on Brandtree belong to 23 owners. The largest is Jollibee Group, with 5; Yum! Brands has 4.
| Brand | Owner | Owner based in |
|---|---|---|
| Chowking | Jollibee Group | 🇵🇭 Philippines |
| Arby's | Inspire Brands | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Chester's | CP Foods | 🇹🇭 Thailand |
| Burger King | Restaurant Brands International | 🇨🇦 Canada |
| Papa Murphy's | MTY Group | 🇨🇦 Canada |
| Wimpy (Middle East) | Americana Restaurants | 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates |
| Steak n Shake | Biglari Holdings | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Choppies Fried Chicken | Choppies | 🇧🇼 Botswana |
Yum! Brands is a publicly listed company headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, founded in 1997. Brandtree records 4 brands under its control, and it is listed as NYSE: YUM.
Yum! Brands was spun off from PepsiCo in 1997 as Tricon Global Restaurants, taking the restaurant chains PepsiCo had bought in the 1970s and 1980s. It separated its Chinese business as a licensee in 2016 and now operates almost entirely through franchisees.
Brandtree records a controlling owner for 2,549 brands that began in the United States. 478 of them (19%) are now controlled by a company headquartered in another country; Taco Bell is not one of them.
PepsiCo spun off its restaurant business as Tricon Global Restaurants, taking KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell out of the drinks and snacks company. PepsiCo had found that operating restaurants competed for capital with its packaged goods brands and complicated its relationships with other chains. Tricon renamed itself Yum! Brands in 2002.
The parent company of Taco Bell is Yum! Brands, a publicly listed company headquartered in the United States.
Yes. Taco Bell originated in the United States in 1962 and its owner, Yum! Brands, is also headquartered in the United States.
Yum! Brands has owned Taco Bell since 6 October 1997.
Before Yum! Brands, Taco Bell was owned by PepsiCo from 1978 until 1997.
Yes. As of 10 October 2026, Taco Bell is still owned by Yum! Brands. The ownership record was last checked against primary sources on that date.
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
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