Yum! Brands, Inc.’s YUM Pizza Hut and its franchisees are planning to hire 40,000 fresh permanent team members to work in restaurants across the United States by the end of 2021. Job seekers can apply for positions at corporate and franchised restaurants.

Most of the jobs are for cook and driver roles as Pizza Hut continues to focus on contactless delivery and pickups. The reopening of economies and resumption of businesses are acting as primary drivers of new jobs in the space. Quite obviously, this reflects the growing demand for restaurant and cafe products.

Cristi Lockett, chief people officer, Pizza Hut said, “Pizza Hut has continued to see explosive growth over the past few months, with the business performing extremely well as a result of increased demand.”

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Price Performance

Shares of the Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) company have surged 39.7% in the past year, compared with the industry’s rally of 25.1%. Strong digital sales, record unit development, robust same-store sales, and the company’s ability to adjust operations, menu options and marketing worldwide helped it counter the challenging scenario.

The company continues to benefit from robust sales momentum in North America, the U.K., and Australia, and improved performance in Europe. In 2020, digital sales increased to $17 billion, reflecting an improvement of 45% from the prior year. In the second quarter, it reported digital sales of more than $5 billion. During the second-quarter 2021 conference call, the company announced that it delivered digital sales of more than $20 billion on a trailing 12-month basis for the first time.

The company is benefiting from expansion efforts. During the first, second, third and fourth quarter of 2020, it opened 515, 328, 556 and 1,024 gross new restaurants, respectively.

Other Solid Restaurant Bets

Some other top-ranked stocks in the same Zacks Retail - Restaurants industry include Jack in the Box Inc. JACK, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. CMG and The Wendy's Company WEN, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Jack in the Box has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 26.4%, on average.

Chipotle earnings for 2021 are expected to rise 137.5%.

Wendy's earnings for 2021 are expected to increase 42.1%.

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