Amanda Helming

Amanda is Chief Marketing Officer at UNFI, the largest publicly-traded grocery distributor in America (~$26 billion in annual sales), where she currently oversees marketing and communications along with a portfolio of 20+ owned brands and 5,000 SKU’s, making it a Top 50 CPG in the U.S.

Amanda formerly served as the chief strategist for Dunkin Brands, as VP Brand Strategy & Marketing, where she led the transformation to be the most loved, on-the-go coffee brand in the world over the past decade. She also previously led marketing at UNOs helping to creatively (and scrappily) overhaul their menu and brand strategy, and at General Mills, she identified creative distribution channels for the Big G Cereal portfolio.

Her extensive experience across the food and coffee industry, scaling growth (both domestically and globally) and leadership across consumer insights, competitive/ market intelligence, brand marketing, sales and communications, and “outside-the-box” placement and partnerships for existing new products in the coffee and food industry lends itself to the go-forward strategy for the Planting Hope Company. During her tenure at Dunkin’, Amanda helped create and operationalize the long term strategic plan (The Blueprint for Growth) including the internal and external updates with investors, developed and scaled the brands first national value strategy (Go2’s, still being run successfully today), overhauled the menu and introduced hundreds of new products and coffee-based beverages resulting in record-breaking category growth, and she helped lead the re-launch of the Espresso platform and the rebrand to “just Dunkin”, all of which earned Dunkin’ the “2018 most transformational brand” accolade in the foodservice industry.

Furthermore, this strategic plan and the 10 or so priorities that underpinned it recently led to the successful sale and privatization of the brands for $11.3 billion ($106.50 / share, up from ~$50 / share). Equally as important to her, Amanda drove significant growth for the franchise partners in her tenure at Dunkin’ – as someone with past experience owning and operating a small business herself, she always seeks to build her base understanding from the “inside-out”. Amanda is someone who clearly values, and has a successful track record, of growing brands with differentiated, high-quality products that serve unmet consumer needs – exactly like the Spinning Wheels Brands. She has a personal and professional mission to transform the future of food, and she’d be thrilled to bring her combined food service and CPG industry expertise, and thoughtful, innovative approach to The Planting Hope Company, Inc. all-women board.