Dive Brief:
- Inspire Brands realigned its corporate structure earlier this month to focus on three areas of operations: brands, commercial and company restaurants and growth, according to a press release issued Thursday.
- To support the realignment, Inspire promoted two executives. Scott Murphy, who has served as head of beverage and snacking at Inspire and as Dunkin’s president since 2020, was made chief brand officer. Dan Lynn was promoted from chief commercial officer to chief commercial and restaurant officer. Christian Charnaux will remain in the chief growth officer role.
- Inspire framed the moves as a way to take advantage of its shared services platform across its brands, which run the gamut from limited-service ice cream shops to full-service sports bars.
Dive Insight:
As chief of the brand vertical, Murphy “will oversee all brands in the United States with the brand presidents of Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’, Jimmy John’s, and Sonic reporting directly to him.” That structure, according to the press release, preserves distinct brand identities while increasing the coordination across brands.
On the commercial front, Lynn will be responsible for the operations of the company’s 2,200 company-owned restaurants. Combining the commercial group and company restaurants group ostensibly improves Inspire’s “ability to lead from the front by using company restaurants as a testbed for innovation. This translates to faster progress and operational improvements for the benefit of the entire brand in both company and franchise-owned restaurants.”
Changes to Charnaux’s responsibilities were less clear, as Charnaux will be in charge of unit growth in the U.S. and abroad, “as well as further unlocking benefits of business integration across the Inspire portfolio. The International, Development, and Supply Chain teams will continue to report to Christian.”
Inspire’s sprawling portfolio of brands — Arby’s, Baskin-Robbins, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’, Jimmy John’s and Sonic Drive-In — is one of the largest and most diverse sets of restaurant brands in the U.S. Publicly traded rivals like Restaurant Brands International and Yum Brands primarily focused on the QSR market sector, despite the variety of menus across their brands. A unified corporate structure may give Inspire better control across its system as it looks to continue growth.
