Craveworthy Brands has appointed Keith Kravcik as Chief Financial Officer. In this role, Kravcik will oversee the Company's financial operations and help guide Craveworthy's continued expansion across its portfolio of 20+ brands and 300+ locations.
Kravcik brings more than three decades of finance and operating leadership across the restaurant and consumer goods industries. He joins Craveworthy from Cleveland Avenue, the Chicago-based food and beverage investment firm co-founded by former McDonald's Corporation CEO Don Thompson and his wife, Liz Thompson, where he served as Chief Investment Officer and Chief Financial Officer, helping identify and scale emerging food and beverage concepts. He also served on the boards of several portfolio companies, including Presto Automation and Farmer's Fridge.
Kravcik spent 16 years at McDonald's Corporation across four progressively senior executive roles, including leading Worldwide Financial Reporting as well as Strategy and Corporate Development at the time of McDonald's acquisitions of Chipotle Mexican Grill and Donatos Pizza. He went on to serve as Chief Financial Officer for McDonald's Latin America, where he reversed losses and grew sales more than 100% over three years, and later as Corporate Vice President and Controller for McDonald's USA, where he developed ownership and profit-optimization plans that increased operating profits by nearly $200 million over three years.
Earlier in his career, Kravcik served as Group Vice President and Corporate Controller at Supervalu, where he served as strategy and finance lead on the $3.3 billion sale of underperforming grocery chains to a Cerberus Capital-led consortium. He was later Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Ovation Brands, where he helped lead a company-wide brand turnaround. He began his career at Ernst & Young, where he spent eleven years in the audit practice, rising to Senior Manager before leaving the firm.
"I'm thrilled to welcome Keith to our leadership team," said Majewski. "Keith has done it all. He helped steer the finances of the most iconic brand in our industry at McDonald's, and he's led major merger & acquisition work at McDonald's, Supervalu and Cleveland Avenue. That combination of operating discipline and deal experience is exactly what Craveworthy needs as we keep adding brands, supporting our franchisees and scaling the platform. Keith knows how to build the financial foundation that lets a growing company move fast without breaking things, and I can't wait to see what we accomplish together."
"What sets Craveworthy apart is the platform Gregg has built: shared purchasing, supply chain, marketing, culinary, technology and back-office support that every brand in the portfolio can tap into," said Kravcik. "I've spent my career on both sides of the table, running finance at McDonald's and investing in emerging concepts at Cleveland Avenue, and I've seen how much faster great brands grow when they have that kind of backbone behind them. That's what makes our acquisitions work. When a brand joins Craveworthy, it immediately benefits from scale and infrastructure that create real synergies a stand-alone brand could never capture on its own. I'm excited to partner with Gregg and the team as we keep building the platform."
Kravcik holds a B.S. in Accounting from DePaul University and is a Certified Public Accountant. He will report directly to Majewski.