Mr. Mark G.R. Myers, 2006 - 2008

Mark Myers has been involved in Restaurants of Jamaica (ROJ) – operators of KFC and Pizza Hut restaurants in Jamaica – since his parents opened the first KFC Restaurant on Hope Road in 1975. At that time, he was a lad of less than 10 years … and his job was to hand out balloons to the eager patrons.

By 1980/81, Mark was working a summer job in ROJ’s Commissary department – loading trucks, riding with the distribution crew … and basically learning the nuts and bolts of the business at that level.

On graduation from Syracuse University (New York, USA) in 1988, he was offered a job with Alamo Rent-A-Car but he instead took up an option from his father and KFC Jamaica founder, Tony Myers, to return to Jamaica and enter the business officially, starting at the bottom of the ladder. Mark Myers worked initially in KFC’s marketing department and continued in this vein until his father’s passing in 1990, when his duties took on a more operational focus.

At that time, there were 13 KFC restaurants in operation and the first Pizza Hut location had yet to be opened. As at December 2006, the total number of KFC restaurants stood at 31, while the number of Pizza Hut outlets totals five (5).

Mark Myers believes in the old maxim: “Make hay while the sun shines.” As he explains: “The Jamaican economy swings between boom and bust and serious investors must therefore be prepared to ride out the bust.” Therefore, despite the economic climate in which Jamaica finds itself at any given time, Mark Myers always sees opportunities to expand the KFC brand in Jamaica. “I suppose it would therefore be safe to say that our philosophy is a growth philosophy – one that might perhaps not be as easy to pursue if the KFC brand were not already so well accepted in Jamaica,” he says.

The ability to pursue that objective has, however, enhanced significantly the legacy that was bequeathed to the three Myers offspring of Tony and Lorna Myers, even as it has benefited the wider Jamaican economy – providing, for example, jobs for thousands of Jamaicans … with the multiplier effect of this being felt by their families and the wider communities in which they live.

Mark Myers contributes quietly at the policy level of several civic organizations. Among those to which he contributes/has contributed are the following:

Past President of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce 2006 – 2008; an organization with which he has long been associated and of which he has always been a very active member. While occupying the post of 1st Vice President of the Chamber – a position he assumed in September 2004 – he served, inter alia, as the JCC’s representative on the private sector-driven Partnership for Progress. That Partnership seeks to identify the challenges that confront the nation and to come up with a private and public sector consensus about what strategies need to be implemented in order to solve those challenges.


Member of the Board of the Jamaica Observer
Member of the Board of NCB Capital Markets

Former Member of the Board of the Downtown Kingston Management District, which focused on the redevelopment and rehabilitation of Downtown Kingston.