KFC’s 1,000th restaurant in CEE opens in Bucharest, Romania. Many of these restaurants exemplify digital forward features such as modern kiosks, digitized drive-thrus, updated e-commerce platforms and data-informed artificial intelligence. Sustained and local growth is fueled by restaurant expansion, specifically in rural communities nationwide.
KFC CEE has the ambition to be the leading quick-service restaurant in the region, with an average of 100 stores slated to open annually. As the restaurants scale, KFC also grows its employee base, leveraging its S.T.A.R.T. Refugees Program to hire more than 2,500 refugees over the next three years.
Maria Cacciapuoti, General Manager in Central Eastern Europe, leads the region’s operations with a focus on scaling a talented team and leveraging partnerships with 20 franchisees across 26 countries to maintain its status as a high-performing region.
About KFC
KFC is a global chicken restaurant brand with a rich, decades-long history of success and innovation. It all started with one cook, Colonel Harland Sanders, who created the Original Recipe more than 90 years ago, a list of 11 secret herbs and spices scratched out on the back of the door to his kitchen. Today, while honouring our heritage, we remain committed to modernizing the colonel’s vision by serving feel-good food at scale through inclusive, equitable and sustainable business practices. We continue to follow his formula for success, with real cooks breading and freshly preparing our delicious chicken by hand in more than 29,000 restaurants in nearly 150 countries and territories worldwide.
![](https://valahia.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/enjoy-romania-experirence.jpg")
