Church's Texas Chicken has appointed Kevin Nemeth as Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, tasking the experienced marketing and digital executive with tightening the brand's commercial strategy across its full restaurant system. The Atlanta-based chain announced the hire May 26, 2026.
Nemeth's mandate is broad. He will oversee brand management, marketing, digital platforms, loyalty, CRM, guest engagement, menu strategy, pricing, and product innovation — essentially every lever that drives top-line revenue for the chain and its franchisee base. The scope signals that Church's Texas Chicken is treating commercial execution as a unified discipline rather than a set of siloed functions.
The loyalty and CRM emphasis is notable at a moment when quick-service chains are under pressure to convert occasional visitors into high-frequency, digitally engaged guests. Competitors across the QSR landscape have leaned heavily on app-based loyalty programs and personalized offers to defend traffic counts as consumers remain cautious on discretionary spending. Church's Texas Chicken — a value-positioned chicken brand with strong presence in urban and suburban markets, including a significant convenience-adjacent footprint — will be looking to Nemeth to close any gap with larger rivals on digital engagement metrics.
For c-store operators who carry Church's Texas Chicken as a foodservice program or compete against its freestanding units near their forecourt, the CCO hire is worth tracking. A more aggressive loyalty and CRM push from the chain could raise the bar on digital guest engagement expectations across the broader QSR-at-cstore category, where operators are already fielding loyalty members through proprietary apps and third-party platforms.
Menu strategy and pricing sit inside Nemeth's portfolio as well — two pressure points that matter acutely to franchisees navigating elevated food and labor costs. Bringing those functions under a single commercial officer rather than splitting them across marketing and operations suggests the brand is prioritizing coordinated revenue management over departmental autonomy.
Church's Texas Chicken did not disclose Nemeth's prior employer or the specific unit count affected by the new structure, but the brand operates thousands of locations globally, with the U.S. and Canada representing its core markets.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
