United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) has hired Dunkin’ Brands executive Jack Clare as chief information officer.
Plans call for Clare, previously senior vice president and chief information and strategy officer at Dunkin’, to start as CIO at UNFI on March 30.
Jack Clare, UNFI's new CIO (Photo courtesy of Dunkin' Brands)
In his new role, Clare will lead strategy and operations for the information technology team to help UNFI better serve its more than 30,000 customers in the United States and Canada, the Providence, R.I.-based food and grocery distributor said. He will report to Eric Dorne, UNFI's chief operating officer.
“Jack is a highly-experienced CIO and a tremendous leader with a longstanding history of putting the customer at the forefront of today’s digital transformation,” Dorne said in a statement. “He will play a fundamental role in driving our ‘Build Out the Store’ growth strategy, help us further accelerate our network integration efforts, and lead planning efforts on how to best leverage data and digital solutions to help support our customers in a continually competitive retail environment. We are thrilled to welcome Jack to UNFI.”
Clare joined Canton, Mass.-based Dunkin’ Brands as senior VP and CIO in August 2012 and then in March 2015 added the chief strategy officer title. As chief information and strategy officer, he oversaw all IT resources and helped support franchisees and drive restaurant profitability through use of technology.
An IT veteran with over 20 years of experience, Clare has held technology and strategic leadership roles at prominent consumer packaged goods and restaurant retailers. Before coming to Dunkin' Brands, he served as VP of IT and CIO for four years at Yum! Restaurants International and spent more than five years at beer, wine and spirits manufacturer Constellation Brands, most recently as its VP of technical services.
Earlier in his career, Clare was a system and flight test engineer with the U.S. Air Force.
UNFI, the nation’s largest publicly traded grocery distributor, serves natural product superstores, independent retailers, conventional supermarket chains, e-commerce retailers, and foodservice providers across North America.
