The Vice President, Marketing leads the strategy, planning, and execution of Five Guys' marketing calendar, go-to-market process, culinary innovation pipeline, field marketing, and guest support functions.
Reporting to the Chief Commercial Officer, this role ensures brand initiatives are guest-insight-led, commercially focused, operationally executable, and aligned with company objectives.
This highly cross-functional leader partners with Operations, Digital, Analytics, Finance, Supply Chain, and Franchise teams to drive disciplined execution, support restaurant-level growth, and strengthen the guest experience across markets.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
Promotional Calendar & Go-to-Market Planning
• Own and manage Five Guys' annual promotional calendar from ideation through execution.
• Lead the go-to-market (GTM) process by establishing frameworks, timelines, and cross-functional processes that support consistent and timely execution.
• Partner with the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) team to align the promotional calendar with paid media, creative, public relations, and social content plans.
• Define and track calendar KPIs, including promotional lift, incidence rates, and attachment rates, to evaluate performance and inform future planning.
• Lead the post-mortem process for major promotional events by capturing learnings that inform future calendar decisions and build institutional knowledge across the organization.
Culinary Innovation & Menu Strategy
• Lead the culinary innovation pipeline by working with internal culinary and operations teams and external partners to develop new products, limited-time offerings, and menu enhancements.
• Establish a consumer-insight-driven stage-gate process for product development to ensure new items are tested, validated, and refined before broad rollout.
• Partner with Supply Chain to evaluate ingredient feasibility, cost structures, and vendor readiness for new menu items.
• Collaborate with Operations to align procedures and training for new promotions.
Field Marketing & Local Activation
• Lead the Field Marketing function by developing strategies and programs that connect Five Guys to local communities, drive restaurant-level traffic, and provide Company and Franchise operators with effective tools for local market activation.
• Develop and manage a local marketing toolkit that allows operators to execute brand-consistent local marketing programs.
Guest Experience
• Own the Secret Shopper program and ensure it effectively measures and recognizes restaurant guest experience performance.
• Manage the Guest Support function by overseeing the systems, processes, and people responsible for receiving, routing, and resolving guest feedback across all channels.
• Partner with Operations to close the loop on systemic guest experience issues by translating patterns identified through Guest Support into operational improvements.
Team Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Lead and develop a team spanning Calendar & GTM, Culinary Innovation, Field Marketing, and Guest Support.
• Recruit, develop, and retain qualified marketing talent while building team capability across the functions supported by this role.
Qualifications Guidelines:
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily.
The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.
Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential
functions.
Education/Experience:
• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, Journalism, or related field required.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in brand marketing, marketing operations, integrated commercial planning, or go-to-market strategy within a consumer-facing brand.
• Demonstrated success owning and scaling promotional calendars, GTM processes, and cross functional execution in a complex organization.
• Proven experience leading culinary or product innovation pipelines in a food and beverage environment, with the ability to evaluate concepts through a guest, operational, and brand equity lens.
• 5+ years of senior people management experience, including leading directors and building teams across multiple functional areas.
• Franchise and multi-unit restaurant experience strongly preferred.
Language Ability:
Excellent verbal and written communication skills are required. This role requires the ability to develop and present complex multi-functional brand plans, communicate go-to-market strategies clearly to cross functional
and franchise stakeholders, and present complex commercial plans to executive audiences clearly and compellingly.
Reasoning Ability:
This position requires strong strategic and operational judgment. The successful candidate will be comfortable navigating complexity and ambiguity, making high-stakes decisions about calendar timing, culinary direction, and resource allocation with incomplete information, and balancing long-term brand building with near-term commercial performance requirements. This includes strong project management and process design capabilities, with the ability to build operating rhythms, governance structures, and accountability frameworks that support disciplined execution.
Supervisory Responsibilities:
This position has supervisory responsibility.
Physical Demands:
This position is primarily office-based and must remain in a stationary position for prolonged periods, using a computer, telephone, and standard office equipment. The position may occasionally require standing, walking, reaching, grasping, and handling objects. Occasional lifting or moving of up to 20 pounds may be required. Travel to restaurant locations, agency partners, media events, and brand activations may be required based on business needs, typically less than 20% of time. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
