Group Product Manager - Restaurant Execution & Enablement

The Group Product Manager (GPM), Restaurant Execution & Enablement is accountable for the vision, strategy, and measurable outcomes of KFC US restaurant execution technology-ensuring that restaurant systems enable fast, accurate, reliable operations that support guest digital growth at national franchise scale.

This leader manages and coaches a team of product managers responsible for core restaurant technologies (e.g., POS/KDS, BOH workflows, menu management, planning/forecasting, and channel/marketplace enablement as applicable). The GPM ensures product teams operate as empowered problem solvers-driving solutions that are valuable, usable, feasible, and viable, and delivered through continuous discovery and delivery.

Restaurant execution technology is a tightly coupled system that directly impacts:

• Restaurant throughput and speed of service

• Order accuracy and readiness reliability

• Menu accuracy and time to live for digital menu updates (e.g., aggressive TTL targets)

• Team member experience and operational adoption

• System resilience during peak and incident conditions

This portfolio must perform in the real world: high volume, high variability, and high cost of failure.

• Define and communicate a clear portfolio vision and multi year strategy for restaurant execution and enablement, aligned to brand goals and operational realities.

• Establish outcome based objectives (OKRs) across the portfolio and ensure priorities reflect the highest restaurant and business value.

• Translate strategy into a sequenced portfolio roadmap that balances:

• Offense (capabilities that unlock growth and adoption) and

• Defense (reliability, tech debt reduction, defect reduction, operational drag removal).

• Directly manage, coach, and develop product managers across the restaurant tech portfolio.

• Ensure teams are truly empowered: clear problems to solve, strong design/engineering partnership, and accountability for outcomes (not output).

• Set quality standards for product discovery, decision making, prioritization, and execution across the product managers you lead.

• Establish operating norms that keep product teams close to the work: time in restaurants, observation of team member workflows, and validation with operators and field partners.

• Drive discovery practices that reduce risk early (value/usability/feasibility/viability) before scaling solutions.

• Ensure solutions account for peak conditions, staffing variability, training constraints, and operational change management.

• Require success metrics and measurement plans before build begins; ensure instrumentation is treated as a product requirement, not an afterthought.

• Forecast impact efficiently using benchmarks and past results; measure post launch outcomes and incorporate learnings into future prioritization.

• Create transparency through regular health reviews of portfolio OKRs and key operational metrics (throughput, accuracy, stability, menu latency).

• Partner deeply with Engineering and Architecture to ensure the restaurant execution stack is scalable, secure, reliable, and maintainable.

• Collaborate across Restaurant Operations, Training, Support/Helpdesk, Finance, Legal, and field/franchise leadership to ensure solutions are operationally viable and adoptable. Manage vendor and partner dependencies where applicable; ensure clear accountability for integration, rollout readiness, and operational support.

• Ensure teams make and meet high integrity delivery commitments, with predictable release readiness and clear "must pass" criteria for store rollouts.

• Drive ruthless simplification and sequencing to maximize value while controlling complexity and release risk.

• Elevate incident learning into product decisions, improving resilience and reducing recurring operational failure modes. (Principle; aligns to "foundation first" emphasis in restaurant tech context.)

• 8-10+ years of experience in product management, product leadership, or closely related technology roles, including ownership of complex operational or omnichannel systems.

• 5+ years leading and developing product managers (formal people management strongly preferred; "player/coach" leadership acceptable with clear examples).

• Proven success delivering outcomes in high availability, high scale operational environments (e.g., retail, QSR, logistics, marketplaces, payments, or distributed field operations).

• Demonstrated ability to define and drive product strategy across multiple teams, with disciplined prioritization and explicit trade offs.

• Strong analytical capability: forecasting impact, defining success metrics upfront, and holding teams accountable to measurement and learning.

• Strong cross functional leadership and executive communication; capable of earning trust and driving alignment across Ops, Engineering, and field stakeholders.

• Technical fluency to understand engineering trade offs and integration complexity across POS/KDS/BOH and connected digital channels.

• Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with restaurant technology portfolios (POS, KDS, BOH workflows, menu management, rollouts) in franchise or multi unit environments.

• Demonstrated experience improving menu accuracy and latency across channels and stakeholders.

• Familiarity with modern product discovery and delivery operating models (e.g., empowered teams / continuous discovery).