New Unified Foodservice Purchasing Co-op Appoints Daniel E. Woodside President and Chief Executive Officer
Louisville, Ky. — January 1999 —
Unified Foodservice Purchasing Co-op®, LLC (UFPC®), which is being formed to provide purchasing services to operators of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants (including corporate-owned stores) in the United States, announced today the appointment of Daniel E. Woodside as President and Chief Executive Officer.
In this position, Mr. Woodside will be responsible for all aspects of UFPC’s activities, and will report directly to the co-op’s Board of Directors, which is comprised of representatives of the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell franchisee community and Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc., the parent company of the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurant companies. Mr. Woodside will also serve as a nonvoting ex-officio member of UFPC’s Board of Directors.
Most recently, Mr. Woodside was Chief Operating Officer of UniPro Foodservice, Inc. located in Atlanta, Ga. In that role, Mr. Woodside is credited with successfully integrating the operations of two separate purchasing cooperatives to form UniPro, which is the largest food service cooperative in the United States, with annual sales in excess of $18 billion. Prior to that, Mr. Woodside served as President of EMCO Foodservice Systems, Inc., a large for-profit food service purchasing cooperative that merged with another company in 1997 to form UniPro. Before his tenure with EMCO, Mr. Woodside served in various positions with General Foods Corp. for 21 years.
"We are very excited about the addition of Dan Woodside as the leader of UFPC’s senior management team," said Thomas M. Cook, Chairman of the Organizing Board of UFPC and President of Taco Bell’s FRANMAC (Franchisee Advisory Management Council). "Dan’s extensive experience in the food service industry — combined with his intimate knowledge of purchasing cooperatives and the corporate merger and integration process — makes him the ideal person to run UFPC. We believe that Dan possesses the strategic vision and leadership skills necessary to ensure the long-term success of the co-op."
UFPC will combine the purchasing power of Tricon’s company-owned and franchisee-owned restaurants, leveraging the system’s scale to drive cost savings and effectiveness. To accomplish this result, the new organization will incorporate the best practices of the FoodService Purchasing Cooperative, Inc., which currently provides purchasing services to most KFC franchisees and many Taco Bell and Pizza Hut franchisees, and Tricon’s Supply Chain Management group, which provides purchasing services to all company-owned restaurants, many Taco Bell franchisee-owned restaurants, and most Pizza Hut franchisee-owned restaurants. Annual purchasing volume for the co-op is expected to exceed $4 billion, making it the largest such purchasing cooperative of its kind in the quick-service restaurant industry.
The FoodService Purchasing Cooperative purchases over $600 million a year in restaurant products and equipment for its KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut franchisee owners. Since 1980, the FoodService Purchasing Cooperative has provided a model for the development of purchasing cooperatives in the food service industry. Tricon is the world’s largest restaurant company in terms of units, with nearly 30,000 restaurants around the world in 100 countries and territories. Tricon’s brands, KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, are the global leaders of the chicken, pizza and Mexican restaurant categories, respectively. Total worldwide system retail sales for the brands were more than $20 billion in 1997. (NYSE: YUM)
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