Church's Texas Chicken Names Kevin Nemeth as Chief Commercial Officer to Drive Commercial Growth

Church's Texas Chicken has appointed Kevin Nemeth, a digital transformation veteran with experience at Popeyes, TD Bank, and L'Oréal, as its new executive vice president and chief commercial officer a role focused on connecting brand, digital, loyalty, menu strategy, and restaurant execution into a unified commercial approach.

A Significant Appointment as Church's Enters a New Growth Phase

Church's Texas Chicken has named Kevin Nemeth as its new executive vice president and chief commercial officer, bringing on an executive with more than 15 years of experience leading digital transformation across restaurants, retail, financial services, and consumer brands. The hire comes at what CEO Roland Gonzalez described as an important phase of growth for the chain one where connecting with guests in more relevant and measurable ways becomes critical to sustained success. Nemeth's background spans several industries and brand types, giving him a perspective that goes well beyond traditional restaurant marketing. His appointment signals that Church's is looking to build commercial capabilities that are more integrated, more data-driven, and more attuned to how modern consumers engage with brands digitally.

What Nemeth Did at Popeyes

The most directly relevant chapter of Nemeth's career for his new role at Church's is his two years at Popeyes. During that time he helped grow digital sales from approximately 4% of total revenue to 20% a shift that represents a fundamental change in how customers were ordering and engaging with the brand. He also played a key role in launching the Popeyes Rewards loyalty program, which reached 5 million members within its first six months of operation. Those are meaningful numbers. Growing digital sales fivefold and building a loyalty program to scale in under a year requires both strategic clarity and strong execution across technology, marketing, and operations. That track record is precisely what Church's is bringing in Nemeth to replicate and build on.

A Broad Commercial Mandate

Nemeth's role at Church's is deliberately wide in scope. He will oversee how the brand presents itself creatively and culturally, how it engages with guests across digital channels, and how it grows both traffic and guest frequency over time. His responsibilities also include supporting franchisees at the store level and developing new ideas for improving the overall guest experience. The connecting thread across all of it is integration. Church's has specifically framed Nemeth's role as creating a more unified commercial approach one where brand identity, digital strategy, loyalty programming, menu development, and restaurant-level execution are no longer operating in separate lanes but working together toward shared outcomes.

Experience Across Industries That Shapes His Approach

Before his time in the restaurant sector, Nemeth built his career across a range of industries that inform how he thinks about brand and digital strategy. His background includes roles at TD Bank, L'Oréal, and HSN, as well as his most recent position as chief digital and marketing officer at Authentic Restaurant Brands, where he led marketing and digital strategy across multiple concepts simultaneously. That cross-industry experience matters because the tools and approaches that drive customer engagement and loyalty in retail and financial services have increasingly found their way into restaurants. Executives who have worked outside the restaurant bubble often bring fresh thinking to problems the industry has been approaching the same way for years.

Connecting Brand to Execution at the Franchise Level

One of the more practically important aspects of Nemeth's mandate is the franchisee support component. Church's operates as a franchise system, which means that commercial strategy only works if it can be implemented consistently at the store level by operators who have varying resources and capabilities. Bridging the gap between corporate commercial strategy and franchisee execution is one of the harder challenges in the QSR business. A loyalty program, digital ordering push, or brand refresh only delivers results if franchisees are equipped to support it. Nemeth's focus on store-level support suggests Church's understands that the commercial vision and the operational reality need to move together.

What This Hire Says About Church's Direction

Taken alongside CEO Gonzalez's comments about the chain entering an important growth phase, the Nemeth appointment paints a picture of a brand that is deliberately investing in the commercial infrastructure it needs to compete more effectively. Digital sales growth, loyalty program development, guest frequency, and integrated brand execution are all areas where Church's Texas Chicken has room to grow and where the right leadership can make a measurable difference. For a chain operating in a highly competitive chicken QSR space, getting the commercial side of the business right is not optional. The brands winning in that category right now are doing so with strong digital engagement, loyal customer bases, and consistent execution. Church's is clearly building toward that standard, and this hire is a direct investment in closing the gap.

Church's Texas Chicken Names Kevin Nemeth as Chief Commercial Officer to Drive Commercial Growth

A Significant Appointment as Church's Enters a New Growth Phase

What Nemeth Did at Popeyes

A Broad Commercial Mandate

Experience Across Industries That Shapes His Approach

What This Hire Says About Church's Direction