Staffing

Kat Cole leaving Focus Brands

Focus Brands President Kat Cole is leaving the company.

Kat Cole is stepping down from her role at Focus Brands. File photo

December 9, 2020

Kat Cole, president of Focus Brands, is leaving the role by the end of the year, she said via Instagram.

"I will share the thinking behind the decision and what's next and all that coming up very soon," she said via Instagram story. "I've got some work to do behind the scenes and have a lot of conversations happening as you can imagine, but I'm so excited to share what I've learned and what's next."

Cole joined the Focus team in 2010 as president of Cinnabon, helping it hit the $1 billion mark. She took over as Focus's COO and president of North America seven years later.

In an email interview with FastCasual, Cole said While She expected to leave years earlier, something kept sucking her back in.

"Each year a new challenge, a new role every few years, along with the company's growth of three additional brands, over 2X revenue growth and doubling the total units to now almost 7,000 around the world, unprecedented multi-channel expansion, and a repeated call to lead through boom times and challenging times," she said."

Cole has spent the most recent years upgrading the company's talent and working with those leaders to build great teams, capabilities and brands. She also spoke about her passion for innovating business models, partnerships and products, building the business through unprecedented times around the world, and most recently completing the company's second restructure to set the company up for more growth.

"It's rare someone gets to choose to go out on top, and that is exactly what I have the privilege to do," Cole told FastCasual. "There are great leaders in the company who will now carry the torch and keep building the business."

Before Cole jumps into running another big company, she's joining a few more boards while continuing on the board of MilkBar. She will be joining a technology board before the end of the year as well as the board for HumanCo SPAC, which just went public today in the wellness space.

She said she is "leaning in to my investing and advisory activity with startups, working on a book, and leaning into other ways to share my experience and lessons with the world — and most beautifully, getting to spend more time with my family. This will be a season of flexibility and sharing my knowledge and helping others build their businesses, and I couldn't be more excited."

Earlier this year, Focus — which is based in Atlanta and owns Auntie Anne's, Carvel, Cinnabon, Jamba, Moe's Southwest Grill, McAlister's Deli, Schlotzsky's and Seattle's Best Coffee — named Jim Holthouser as the company's new CEO. He succeeded Steve DeSutter, who retired after nearly six years in the role.