Director, Franchise Operations - South at The Coca-Cola Company

Job description

Job Description Summary: Location: Houston, San Antonio, Austin, or other locations within the South Region. The Director, Franchise Leadership – South Zone serves as the primary strategic business partner between The Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages (CCSWB) across the South Zone. The role is responsible for strengthening system alignment, accelerating profitable growth, and driving marketplace excellence across the total Coca-Cola beverage portfolio, including Trademark Coca-Cola, Sparkling Flavors, Water, Sports, Juice, Dairy, Tea, Coffee, Energy, and Emerging Categories. Reporting to the Senior Director II, Franchise Operations, the role translates aligned South Zone and commercial priorities into bottler-specific operating plans and works across multiple stakeholders to deliver volume, revenue, transactions, share, and profitable growth objectives. The role connects commercial with frontline execution, maintains a regular in-market cadence across assigned geographies, and leads follow-through on agreed corrective actions. The Director also identifies common execution and capability gaps, shares successful practices across bottlers, and builds capabilities in partnership with the appropriate South Zone functional teams. The Director operates as an experienced individual contributor and escalates material risks, resource needs, and trade-offs with clear recommendations. The successful candidate demonstrates a strong Growth Mindset, continuously identifying opportunities to accelerate business performance, challenge conventional thinking, leverage insights, build organizational capabilities, and inspire both Company and bottler partners to pursue innovative solutions that create sustainable value for the Coca-Cola system. What You’ll Do for Us Serve as the primary strategic liaison between The Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages (CCSWB) South Zone leadership team Drive performance across the full Coca-Cola portfolio within CCSWB South Zone, with responsibility spanning all categories, brands, and packages in the assigned geography, supporting profitable volume, revenue, transactions, mix, and share growth through clear territory priorities and accountable execution with bottler partner. Lead territory deployment of aligned commercial strategies and initiatives, partnering with Commercial and other functional teams to establish operational readiness, clear sequencing, ownership, and adoption within the assigned geography. Champion execution excellence by coaching, influencing, and supporting the bottler organization to achieve top-tier performance in Market Street Challenge and other system execution benchmarks. Ensure the right utilization and deployment of Market Street Challenge and Execute, Sell Hunt capabilities. Build and maintain strong executive-level relationships that foster trust, transparency, and mutual accountability. Partner with CCSWB and internal stakeholders to provide strategic input, recommendations, and fact-based insights during the development of annual and long-range Joint Business Plans (JBPs). Develop and activate contingency plans with bottler and cross-functional partners to protect annual business plan delivery across revenue, volume, share, net outlets, SOVI, and pricing execution; monitor recovery milestones and results. Expand territory potential through Share of Visual Inventory (SOVI), Cold Drink Equipment (CDE), innovation execution, and strong conversion of aligned category and commercial plans into outlet-level results. Strengthen operating partnerships across multiple stakeholders by aligning Zone leadership, operations, sales, and frontline teams on agreed priorities across customers, channels, brands, and packages. Assess differences in market potential and performance within South Zone; recommend priorities, resource needs, and segmented execution interventions to the Senior Director II, and implement agreed choices. Participate in weekly and monthly p