Chris Turner, the new CEO of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut owner Yum! Brands (YUM), still remembers growing up on a rice farm.

So one shouldn’t be shocked if Turner hasn’t participated in the new rage of fast food CEOs posting silly videos of themselves eating their food.

“I have big meals from our brands all the time, and I eat every morsel on the plate and absolutely love it,” Turner said. “I will leave the social media to our brand leaders. They’re the best positioned to do that,” Turner said on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast.

A new fast food on-camera eating battle erupted in early March. McDonald’s (MCD) CEO Chris Kempczinski led the way, going viral in a promotional video where he tried the company’s new Big Arch burger. The clip was widely mocked for his seemingly hesitant approach to eating the burger, taking an unusually small, delicate bite and repeatedly referring to the burger as a “product.”

Capitalizing on the backlash, Burger King US and Canada president Tom Curtis released a TikTok video three days later. It featured him taking an enthusiastic bite of a Whopper and joking that the only thing missing was a “napkin.”

Curtis’s viral moment also shed light on the revamped Whopper, which has long been the company’s answer to McD’s Big Mac.

Since then, a host of restaurant CEOs have taken a shot at creating a viral moment — though all have fallen short of Kempczinski and Curtis’s moment in the sun.

While other fast food execs are powdering their faces for the iPhone camera, Turner is settling into the top C-suite spot.

Turner officially took the reins as CEO of Yum! Brands on Oct. 1, 2025, following the retirement of longtime leader David Gibbs.

The Arkansas native grew up on a rice farm and later earned an industrial engineering degree. Before joining Yum! as CFO in 2019, he spent more than 13 years as a partner at McKinsey & Co. and held senior roles at PepsiCo, where he led the transformation for Frito-Lay.

During his tenure at Yum! Brands as CFO and later chief franchise officer, Turner was a primary architect of the company’s digital shift, spearheading initiatives such as the AI-driven technology platform Byte by Yum!

Turner said he’s focused on menu innovation across the brands, the growth of Taco Bell overseas, and deploying AI in areas like busy drive-throughs.

He is also shopping the iconic Pizza Hut brand after putting it up for sale late last year.

“There’s likely going to need to be investment in the brand,” Turner said. “There may need to be some ownership of stores. So there’s a lot of work to be done now. Some of those things are things that Yum! typically doesn’t do.”