Wendy’s Gives Tariq Hassan a Combined Marketing and Customer Growth Role

Tariq Hassan’s new job at Wendy’s combines two responsibilities that restaurant teams experience as one: attracting a guest and giving that guest a reason to return. The company appointed him chief marketing and customer growth officer on August 24, effective immediately, reporting to President and CEO Bob Wright. He joins the senior leadership team in a newly created role. Wendy’s appointment announcement

The sales backdrop gives the new role urgency. On August 7, Wendy’s reported a 7.0% decline in U.S. same-restaurant sales for the second quarter ended June 28. Wright identified weak traffic, value and franchisee economics, and described a turnaround agenda spanning food, marketing, operations, digital frequency and development. Those results precede Hassan’s appointment; they establish the conditions he inherits. Wendy’s second-quarter results

Hassan previously served as McDonald’s U.S. chief marketing and customer experience officer. Wendy’s said U.S. Chief Marketing Officer Lindsay Radkoski, in that position since 2024, would leave following a transition over the coming weeks. The announcement sets out the people and reporting relationship, but provides no new campaign budget, franchisee requirement or quantified performance target. Appointment and transition details

For operators, the useful question is how a broader leadership role changes decisions reaching the restaurant. A new title can bring customer acquisition and repeat business into the same discussion. It does not, by itself, establish who controls the menu, technology spending or a franchisee’s local execution.

Give the growth mandate a usable measure#

Consider a hypothetical offer that brings a customer into the app for the first time. The marketing team can count the response immediately. A restaurant manager sees the discounted ticket, preparation work and handoff. Neither view alone establishes whether the offer built a more valuable customer relationship.

A shared measure would follow the customer beyond enrollment: whether an order was completed, whether another visit followed and what the restaurant retained after the offer’s costs. Separating first-time guests from existing customers using a new ordering channel would make the result more useful. Moving a regular customer from the counter to an app may have value, but it answers a different question from bringing in a customer who otherwise would not have visited.

That distinction matters when several teams can claim success from the same transaction. A campaign might increase digital orders while total restaurant orders barely change. Another might produce a strong initial response followed by weak repeat visits. Operators need enough detail to distinguish those outcomes before using either as a reason to extend a promotion.

A leader responsible for both marketing and growth could bring those measures into one review, giving store managers a usable result without asking each to assemble the analysis.

A practical campaign brief could identify the intended customer behavior, the period over which it will be measured, the restaurant work required and the person responsible for resolving problems. Wendy’s has not announced that process. Such a brief would give franchisees a concrete basis for judging a program and supplying feedback.

Make the restaurant’s experience part of the handoff#

Radkoski’s transition period also presents a less visible management task: preserving what the organization has already learned. Upcoming commitments, unfinished tests and franchisee feedback need to survive a leadership change. Otherwise, a new team can spend its first months rediscovering why an apparently attractive idea was difficult to execute.

A useful handoff would distinguish a weak proposition from an execution problem. If guests understood an offer but did not want it, the response belongs largely in the proposition. If guests wanted it but encountered confusing redemption or an inconsistent handoff, changing the advertising alone would leave the problem in place. Both possibilities require evidence from the restaurant, including examples that a sales dashboard cannot explain.

Franchisees can contribute by documenting specific moments: which offer customers misunderstood, which menu question slowed ordering or which digital instruction required staff intervention. Concrete observations give leadership something to change. General complaints about marketing, or an assumption that every disappointing result reflects store execution, provide much less direction.

The same discipline applies to a successful campaign. A restaurant that absorbs extra orders smoothly may have preparation practices worth sharing, rather than simply a favorable sales result worth celebrating.

Hassan arrives with a title that puts customer growth beside marketing. For the restaurant teams expected to deliver that growth, a valuable early sign would be simpler instructions, a clear route for feedback and decisions that reflect what actually happens after the customer responds.