Brand Manager, Beverages

About the role

The Brand Manager, Beverages owns KFC's beverage business – tea, carbonated soft drinks, KWENCH, seasonal offerings, and future innovation. The role owns this Consumer Understanding Opportunity (CUO) from validated concept to market, with accountability for commercialization and performance, turning beverages into traffic, check, and engagement. This role is critical to the Bird Comeback Plan because it owns concept-to-market for the beverage growth platform that enables KFC to become more Relevant, Visible, and Consistent with customers. It anchors Modern Menu and prices within Modern Value guardrails, and unlocks Partnerships – leveraging The Coca-Cola Company to fund and fuel category growth. Reporting to the Sr Director, Retail Marketing, this leader develops and owns the annual beverage business plan – strategy, commercialization pipeline, promotional calendar, financial targets, and metrics – pricing within the guardrails Value & eComm sets, and leads cross-functional teams, franchisees, and Coca-Cola to deliver measurable results across the system.

Responsibilities

• Owns the Beverages CUO concept-to-market; recommends the annual plan to Retail Marketing.
• Takes validated beverage concepts from CI & Menu and owns them concept-to-market across tea, CSDs, KWENCH, seasonal, and future innovation.
• Develops and owns the annual beverage plan - strategy, commercialization pipeline, promo calendar, targets, and metrics.
• Translates trends into commercialization strategies that accelerate category growth.
• Owns beverage P&L, attachment, and performance; prices within Value & eComm guardrails.
• Drives beverage sales, profitability, attachment, and guest satisfaction against targets.
• Optimizes assortment and promotion, pricing within the guardrails Value & eComm sets.
• Grows beverage attachment and check across the calendar.
• Owns commercialization; partners with Culinary, Supply Chain, and beverage suppliers.
• Owns beverage commercialization from validated concept through national launch.
• Contributes beverage tests into the single test-and-learn agenda owned by CI & Menu.
• Delivers clean concept-to-brief-to-retail-to-commercials execution.
• Owns the Coca-Cola marketing partnership; partners on joint business planning.
• Leads the Coca-Cola partnership to unlock innovation, funding, and joint growth.
• Converts supplier investment into system-wide category performance.
• Manages other beverage suppliers to strengthen long-term category health.
• Partners with Ops, Supply Chain, Finance; feeds one franchisee voice.
• Feeds the single franchisee voice per topic - calendar via Sr Director, value via Value & eComm, menu via CI & Menu - rather than running a separate NCAC track.
• Aligns Ops, Supply Chain, Finance, and Value & eComm around shared priorities.
• Builds franchisee trust by balancing ambition with operational excellence.
• Owns adoption of AI and analytics tools for the platform.
• Uses AI and analytics for forecasting, planning, and portfolio decisions.
• Automates reporting to create capacity for innovation and partnership work.

Requirements

• Undergraduate degree required (Marketing