Although he said he "never hungered for" the chief executive spot, Mr. Enrico's subsequent experience running the company's Frito-Lay and restaurant divisions -- which, at the time, included Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC -- made him the obvious replacement for the chief executive at the time, Wayne Calloway, who fell ill with prostate cancer in the early 1990's.
Elior, a French catering and fast-food company, got its start in 1991 when its co-presidents, Francis Markus and Robert Zolade, led a group of managers at Accor, a service company that was concentrating on hotels, in buying a controlling stake in what was then Accor's restaurant division, Générale de Restauration.
The company, which operates Marriott hotels in Britain, is also reorganizing and rebranding parts of its restaurant division.
Private equity firm Cinven had bought the Gondola Group in 2006, but was reported earlier this year to be considering breaking this restaurant division apart.
"Is that the guy with the horse?" asked Jon Luther, the chief executive of the restaurant division of Allied Domecq, which owns Dunkin' Donuts.
The next year, he spun off the restaurant division, composed of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut chains, as an independent public company, creating what is now known as Yum Brands.
1993 95: director, restaurant division; 1995 97: director, financial services and property division, in charge of seven Jardine Pacific joint ventures in financial services and property across Asia, with assets in excess of $700m Hobbies Trying to beat his wife at chess.
When he was a vice president at the Pillsbury corporate headquarters, Cain decided that he had hit a dead end, so he gave up the title, took a pay cut and started again from the bottom at the company's restaurant division.
Mr. Cordish, 36, is a vice president, responsible for the development and management of the entertainment and restaurant division at the Cordish Company of Baltimore, a family-owned real estate developer; his father, David Cordish, who also lives in Baltimore, is the chairman.
That included more openness from McDonald's on the performance of the company-operated restaurant division McOpCo.
John Dasburg, 58, a veteran CEO of Northwest Airlines who ran the Big Boy and Roy Rogers chains at Marriott's restaurant division in the 1980s, was brought in this April to right Burger King for at least a partial sale by Diageo.
