China's KFC and Pizza Hut CEO said she spends hours watching her customers eat

• China's KFC and Pizza Hut CEO said that she sits and watches her customers eat.
• This is one way she gains important consumer behavior insights, she said at a Fortune conference.
• CEOs like Whole Foods' Jason Buechel and LVMH's Bernard Arnault also walk their shop floors.

Joey Wat, the head of KFC and Pizza Hut in China, has an unusual approach to designing new products: She sits in restaurants for hours, watching her customers eat.

Wat is the CEO of Yum China, the company that owns KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and other fast-food brands in the country.

Speaking at the 2024 Fortune Global Forum, which was held in New York City last week, Wat said that she stakes out Yum China restaurants and spends "two, three hours" watching people eat. That time leads to new product ideas, like KFC China's "mash potato burger."

"So apparently, when kids eat the fried chicken, they eat it with the mashed potato," she said to Fortune, explaining that Gen Z diners dipped their fried chicken into mashed potatoes and then into the gravy.

"What we can do with that insight is get rid of the bone," she added saying that this made them launch the boneless "mash potato burger" in China.

"Just watch with heart," Wat added to Fortune. "Some things you can observe directly from the customer and sometimes talking to the store manager helps."

According to Yum China, KFC is China's most popular fast-food chain, with over 11,000 outlets in the country.

Wat is not the only CEO who swears by going onto the shop floor.

Walmart founder Sam Walton, an experienced pilot, used to travel the country in a small private plane and sometimes visited different cities on random visits to inspect stores.

Starbucks' former CEO Laxman Narasimhan, during his short stint as the company's head, went through barista training and said in a memo to staff in March that he would work behind the counter for half a day monthly. Starbucks' new CEO said he also plans to spend time in stores.

Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel visits the supermarket "at least twice a day, every single day," Fortune reported in August.

A self-proclaimed "foodie," Buechel told Fortune that he usually checks out the cheeses and salad bar and likes to pick up new products to try out different recipes.

Fortune reported that his twice-a-day shopping even extends to vacation. Buechel's office is located above Whole Foods' flagship store in Austin.

And Bernard Arnault, the founder and chairman of French luxury giant LVMH, visits the stores of his group's brands, such as Celine, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Tiffany & Co., on Saturdays.

He makes detailed notes of any issues he sees in the stores, his son Alexandre Arnault said to Bloomberg in June.

Representatives of Yum China didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.