Industry
F&B Services
Company size
10,001+ employees
Headquarters
Sharjah, UAE
Founded
1964
About Americana Restaurants
Americana Restaurants is the largest restaurant operator in the MENA region and Kazakhstan in terms of number of restaurants in its countries of operations. Americana Restaurants operates iconic global brands such as KFC, Pizza Hut, Hardee’s, Krispy Kreme and TGI Fridays, along with proprietary brands such as Wimpy and Chicken Tikka across the MENA region and Kazakhstan for almost fifty years.
The strength of Americana Restaurants is in the diversity of its portfolio which covers some of the most popular food categories including QSR, casual dining, indulgence, and coffee. Americana leverages the worldwide appeal and recall of its iconic brands, sustained focus on customer satisfaction, implementation of digital measures to increase efficiency in operations and enhance the customer experience. It replicates, improves and adapts to local tastes the tried-and-tested dining solutions from some of the world’s most popular brands with multi-decade global brand equity and high embedded customer trust, appeal and preference.
Americana Restaurants is proud to be amongst the 57 organizations worldwide to be honored with Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award 2023. Being a two-time winner in consecutive years is an achievement and a testament of the continued efforts of our 40,000 members to make Americana Restaurants an Exceptional Place to Work and Employer of Choice. Our vision-mission-purpose resonates equally with team members in our restaurants, as well as our shareholders. Our focus on team members and customers is central to our success.
Join the Team
OUR EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT
Our senior leaders bring a wealth of experience and expertise in the global and regional food and restaurant industries ensuring the successful implementation of our strategy through operational excellence, continuous innovation, and effective management of our workforce across the region.
AMARPAL SANDHU
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Amarpal leads Americana Restaurants multi-brand, multi-country restaurant portfolio across MENA and Kazakhstan. He joined as the COO of KFC in 2017 to lead the transformation of Americana’s largest brand with close to a thousand restaurants across 12 countries and was promoted to CEO in 2019. Â
Amarpal has been instrumental in fostering a performance driven, values led culture deep into the organization and building a world-class management team. He leads Americana’s strategic vision of becoming the fastest growing restaurant operator in the world through a laser sharp focus on efficient capital deployment, promoting innovation and creativity, turning around brands and markets, and ensuring right talent at the right place.Â
HARSH BANSAL
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER AND CHIEF GROWTH OFFICER
Harsh has been the CFO of Americana Restaurants since 2018. He took on the additional responsibility of CGO (Chief Growth Officer) in 2021.Â
He began his career in the Americana Group as a Senior Director – Corporate Finance & Strategy function. He was part of the transformation team post-acquisition in 2016 and played a pivotal role in divestments of non-core businesses and defining the new organization structure. Â
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As the CGO, he leads Americana Restaurant’s strategic vision of becoming the fastest growing restaurant operator in the world, with an accelerated focus on expanding the current portfolio through new store openings, expansion of brands in existing and entering new segments/categories such as Coffee in our core markets of GCC. Â
Vishal Bhatia
Chief Operating Officer (Yum Brands)
Vishal is the COO for Yum! brands in Americana Restaurants heading its KFC & Pizza Hut business. He joined Americana in 2020.Â
In his role, Vishal leads Americana’s largest restaurant portfolio across MENA and Kazakhstan. A strong advocate of bringing together consumer orientation and commercial outcomes, he drives a culture of consumer-centric operating excellence within the team, and with the franchisors. He has built a multi-cultural team with diverse experiences that continues to build best in class executional capability for the business.
METTE HYBSCHMANN
GENERAL MANAGER, MULTI BRANDS
Mette joined Americana in 2022. Mette is responsible for running our Multi Brands and developing new brands including Wimpy, Krispy Kreme, Baskin Robbins, TGI Fridays and Peet’s Coffee.
Ramandeep Singh Virdi
Chief Information Officer
Ramandeep is the CIO of Americana Restaurants. His global career of more than 23 years spans business domains including retail, airlines, travel, R&D, hotels, business process outsourcing and products. Â
As a digital leader, Ramandeep has a proven track record of transforming organizations through technology and delivering business impact.
As the CIO, Ramandeep has been instrumental in driving innovation for Americana Restaurants by leveraging a suite of best in class integrated technology systems that now supports 2,100 restaurants across 12 countries.
He has built a digital ecosystem at Americana Restaurants which is now powering some of the best rated apps in the QSR industry. His focus on self-service through smart kiosks, tablets and car hops supported by advanced analytics has led to improved guest experiences.Â
Dusan Folta
Chief Development Officer
Dusan joined Americana Restaurants in early 2021 as Chief Development Officer and is responsible for the Development function, including Real Estate, Design, Construction, Maintenance, Sales and Catering, across 12 countries.
In his role, Dusan led the design revamp for most of Americana brands, with a focus on off premise sales channels and new openings through carve outs of current stores. He plays a key role in organizing the development processes such as data driven market planning, transparent new openings-remodels workflow and strengthening Company negotiation capabilities through team training and creating market specific rent strategies.Â
HESHAM TALAAT
GENERAL MANAGER HARDEE’S AND CHICKEN TIKKA
Hesham Talaat has been with Americana Restaurants since the last 3 decades. He currently leads Hardee’s and Chicken Tikka brands in the MENA and Kazakhstan.
Through his career journey with Americana, Hesham has grown within the organization, starting off with running operations at a store level to leading the second biggest brand within Americana.Â
Having successfully demonstrated the ability to transform the business, Hesham has been instrumental in leading the turnaround of our operations in Morocco and KFC in Kuwait, KSA and Egypt driving our revenue and profitability. Prior to taking over the reins of Hardee’s, Hesham was the Senior Area Director for KFC – KSA, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq and Bahrain.Â
Operating with a mindset of taking his team and people along with him, Hesham has been able to ensure that his people constantly grow and develop, thereby making sure of a strong succession plan in place.Â
DEBA ADHYA
HEAD PROCUREMENT AND SUPPLY CHAIN
Deba leads Procurement, Supply Chain and Quality teams at Americana Restaurants handling billion-dollar procurement budget and servicing all brands and markets across MENA region and Kazakhstan.Â
He started his Americana journey in 2019 as Area Director KFC for UAE, Oman & Qatar and then went on to lead the Home Delivery function.
Benefits for UAE National Talent
- Medical Insurance
- Housing Allowance
- Annual Leave
- Restaurants Employee Discount
- Maternity & Paternity Leave​
- Life & Disability Insurance​
- Service Awards
- Employee Engagement Calendar of Events​
A culture of performance and achievement
Our values are what stitches us together as a team and are at the core of our strong corporate culture. Embodied in our DNA, they guide the decisions we make each day, individually and collectively. Our values foster an environment where leaders of tomorrow are created to fulfil our vision of becoming the most trusted and fastest growing food operator in the world.
INTEGRITY
We always do the right thing, even if no one is watching. We are honest, transparent and inspire trust.
EXCELLENCE
We have an unwavering commitment to quality. We strive for excellence in everything that we say and do and aim to exceed expectations.
OWNERSHIP MINDSET
We think and act like owners. We monitor our business closely, make difficult decisions, and treat every dollar as if it is our own.
COLLABORATION
We leverage our collective genius. We achieve our best results through teamwork and shared goals.
CUSTOMER OBSESSION
We exceed customer expectations everyday by providing quality products & exceptional service.
AGILITY & INNOVATION
We embrace innovation and change. We operate with a sense of urgency and swiftly adapt to market and customer changes, to remain relevant.
our workplace
