GEN Restaurant Group has named Luke A. Hewko as chief financial officer, tasking him with accelerating the Korean barbecue chain's push into consumer packaged goods and broadening its multi-channel revenue base, the company announced June 3.
The appointment is a strategic signal for a concept that has been expanding its physical footprint while simultaneously exploring CPG licensing as a margin-diversification lever. Hewko steps into the CFO seat at a moment when GEN must balance unit-level economics — including the high labor intensity of interactive tabletop grilling — against the capital requirements of both new restaurant development and retail shelf placement. No specific AUV, comp-sales figure, or unit count was disclosed in conjunction with the announcement.
The move tracks a broader playbook emerging across experiential full-service operators, where restaurant brands with strong culinary identity are treating CPG not as a side project but as a parallel revenue channel capable of carrying royalty-style economics without the fixed overhead of a traditional unit build. Chains in the polished-casual and ethnic-cuisine segments have increasingly pursued area development agreements alongside retail partnerships to spread brand awareness into markets where brick-and-mortar expansion would be capital-prohibitive.
For GEN specifically, multi-channel growth likely encompasses retail sauces, marinades, and meal-kit adjacencies — categories where Korean cuisine has demonstrated outsized consumer demand. Off-premise adoption accelerated during the pandemic disrupted the all-in-dining model that anchors KBBQ, pushing operators in the segment to rethink revenue architecture. A CFO with a cross-channel mandate suggests GEN's leadership sees financial structure, not just culinary programming, as the constraint on that diversification.
Hewko's background and prior roles were not detailed in the release, but the scope of his mandate — CPG acceleration alongside restaurant finance — indicates GEN is positioning the CFO function as a commercial growth role rather than a pure controls-and-reporting seat. Operators watching the brand's trajectory will look for future disclosure on unit count velocity, same-store sales trends, and any licensing or co-manufacturing agreements that emerge from the new strategic direction. Coverage of similar executive moves in the full-service segment can be found in our leadership and operations tracker and our ongoing look at CPG channel strategy among restaurant brands.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.