Senior Director, Innovation

WHO WE ARE

We’re not in the wing business. We’re in the flavor business. It’s been our mission to Serve the World Flavor since we first opened in 1994, and we’re just getting started. 1997 saw the opening of our first brand partner operated Wingstop location, and by 2002 we had served the world one billion wings. It’s flavor that defines us and has made Wingstop one of the fastest growing brands in the restaurant industry.

Above all else – our success is largely due to our people and our core values, or what we call The Wingstop Way of being entrepreneurial, service-minded, fun, and authentic. We believe having a strong people foundation centered on these collective values creates a crave-worthy culture and talented team, as well as ensures our brand is poised for accelerated growth. We all win together.

The Senior Director, Growth Innovation is responsible for defining and leading Wingstop's innovation strategy to drive sustainable, profitable growth while strengthening the brand's relevance with consumers. This role oversees a diversified portfolio of growth initiatives spanning menu innovation, national value strategy, guest occasions, packaging, and experience innovation, ensuring Wingstop continues to evolve in ways that are culturally relevant, operationally executable, financially impactful, and true to the brand.

As the leader of Wingstop's growth innovation capability, this role will build and operate a high-performing innovation engine that transforms consumer insights, cultural trends, and business opportunities into scalable growth platforms. Working cross-functionally across Brand, Culinary, Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, and Analytics, the Senior Director will establish the processes, governance, and strategic roadmap that accelerate innovation from idea to commercialization.

Success in this role requires balancing long-term strategic thinking with disciplined execution—building a healthy pipeline of innovations that drive measurable business results, strengthen brand relevance, deepen guest engagement, and reinforce Wingstop's competitive advantage.

• Develop and lead Wingstop's enterprise growth innovation strategy aligned to long-term business objectives.
• Own a balanced innovation portfolio across menu, flavors, national value, guest occasions, packaging, and experience innovation.
• Identify future growth opportunities through consumer insights, market trends, competitive intelligence, and cultural signals.
• Prioritize investments across short-term wins, mid-term growth initiatives, and long-term innovation platforms.

• Own the end-to-end innovation pipeline from opportunity identification through testing, commercialization, national launch, and post-launch optimization.
• Establish a repeatable innovation operating model that enables speed, disciplined decision making, and cross-functional alignment.
• Ensure every initiative has a clear business case, revenue hypothesis, and defined success metrics tied to traffic, sales, margin, and guest engagement.

• Lead a structured test-and-learn agenda across products, value architecture, guest occasions, packaging, and experience innovations.
• Define clear success criteria and decision frameworks to scale, iterate, or discontinue initiatives.
• Translate insights into action by rapidly iterating based on guest feedback, operational feasibility, and business performance.

• Partner across Brand Marketing, Partnerships, Culinary, Operations, Supply Chain, Digital, Finance, Consumer Insights, and Analytics to deliver innovation initiatives successfully.
• Balance consumer desirability with operational feasibility and franchise profitability.
• Influence senior leadership and build alignment around innovation priorities and investment decisions.

• Measure innovation performance through portfolio scorecards and post-launch evaluations.
• Optimize the innovation portfolio based on financial performance, guest adoption, operational execution, and strategic impact.
• Continuousl…