Beverage Lead: Kwench

At KFC, we pride ourselves on being original. We even named our recipe after it. But for us, the answer to the question is simple. Be You. Everyone at KFC is different. Unique. It’s what makes us special - Our people, The Originals. And we welcome you to join us. Bring your individuality to the table. Bring your grit and energy. Bring your spirit. Your story. Your drive and your passion. Bring it. Every piece of you. Even the parts you don’t like. Because we value our people no matter what. We’ll feed your potential and we’ll support you; to be your best self, to make a difference, and have fun. Together, we can be part of something truly extraordinary. All you have to do, is Bring it.

This role requires you to own the end-to-end growth strategy for Kwench, KFC South Africa’s beverage line, with exclusive accountability for building a distinctive, scalable and profitable beverage platform. Lead portfolio architecture, innovation, pricing, experience, partnerships and integrated activation to grow beverage penetration, attachment, frequency and margin.

Education:

- Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Commerce or a related field.
- Postgraduate qualification preferred; MBA advantageous.

Experience:

- Approximately 7 to 10 years of progressive beverage, category, portfolio, innovation, trade marketing or brand leadership experience.
- Strong beverage experience in soft drinks, juice, water, coffee, tea, energy, dairy-based beverages, foodservice or adjacent consumer categories.
- Proven ability to build portfolio architecture, innovation pipelines and channel plans with clear commercial accountability.
- Experience managing suppliers, bottlers, equipment partners, commercial terms and operational dependencies.
- Strong understanding of revenue growth management, pack-price architecture, attachment, margin, waste and channel economics.
- Experience scaling propositions across a multi-site or franchise network is advantageous.

Capabilities:

- Commercial judgement: Connect customer demand, pricing, product mix and investment choices to sales, transactions, margin and long-term value.
- Consumer and cultural intelligence: Translate changing needs, occasions and cultural signals into commercially relevant propositions.
- Portfolio strategy: Establish clear roles, priorities and guardrails across propositions and channels.
- Innovation leadership: Define problems to solve, build a test-and-learn pipeline and make disciplined scale, optimise or stop decisions.
- Integrated marketing leadership: Set clear briefs and align creative, media, digital, CRM, PR and restaurant activation.
- Execution leadership: Mobilise cross-functional teams with clarity, accountability, pace and early risk escalation.
- Data and AI fluency: Apply modern insight, measurement and marketing tools to improve decisions and effectiveness.
- Enterprise influence: Build alignment with senior leaders, franchise partners and specialist teams.
- Beverage category expertise: Strong command of consumption occasions, formats, flavour trends, dispense systems, packaging and category economics.
- Supplier and quality governance: Balance innovation speed with food safety, quality, supply resilience, equipment reliability and contractual discipline.