Einstein Noah Restaurant Group Inc. has announced that it has named foodservice veteran Jeff Keune to the new position of vice president of marketing and formed a partnership with Y&R Chicago as its agency of record.
Keune most recently served as vice president of daypart development at Wendy's/Arby's Group Inc., where he held various marketing responsibilities during the past nine years. Keune has an MBA degree from Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University and a bachelor degree from Northwestern University.
As vice president of marketing, Keune will be responsible for leading and executing key marketing initiatives and will have overall responsibility for product management and the marketing calendar. He will report to James O'Reilly, chief concept officer for Einstein Noah Restaurant Group Inc.
In conjunction with Keune's appointment, Y&R Chicago was named agency of record for Einstein Noah Restaurant Group and will be responsible for creative, digital and media campaigns. Y&R was chosen in a bid process involving three other agencies.
"We were impressed with the integrated ideas Y&R delivered, both on and offline," O'Reilly said. "Creative and media were seamless, including traditional, digital and social marketing initiatives."
Einstein Noah Restaurant Group has more than 680 locations in 38 states.
In other news, the Denver Business Journal has reported the company's chief financial officer Rick Dutkiewicz is leaving the company as of April 9 to pursue other interests.
Dutkiewicz joined the company in 2003. While there, he developed new financial reporting tools for the company to analyze the performance of some 700 stores, rebuilt credibility with Wall Street rating agencies, and engineered a 2007 offering of 5 million shares of Einstein Noah stock, raising $83.7 million used to pay off debt.
