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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦
Whataburger, the Texan icon of late-night drive-thru devotion and grilled-to-order hospitality, is shaping its future with a deliberate duet of leadership. The brand announced that Todd Huetinck has joined as chief supply chain officer, effective immediately, signaling that operations discipline will ride alongside ambition. Huetinck arrives from CKE Restaurants, where he most recently served as senior vice president of supply chain management, overseeing operations for 3,000 Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants. His career, built across quality assurance and global logistics, hints at the kind of scale Whataburger envisions as it expands. We might wonder: how will this pairing translate intent into action?
Huetinck’s 18-year arc at CKE Restaurants began in quality assurance and matured into a global framework. He led global quality assurance and food safety for 3,600 restaurants in 40 countries as vice president (2017), then expanded into purchasing and quality assurance (2019). By 2021 he was senior vice president of supply chain management, overseeing more than $1 billion in annual purchases and a distribution network that included 15 warehouses, across four departments, purchasing, distribution, QA/product compliance, and restaurant food safety, while collaborating with culinary innovation. Whataburger positions this background as foundational to scaling across more than 1,000 locations, with technology-driven supplier management guiding the expansion. “My first experience... Texas,” Huetinck noted; the message is one of continuity married to growth.
