Building and Maintaining a Cult Brand


What separates a popular brand from a cult brand, and how do you scale without losing the magic that made people fall in love with it in the first place?

In this keynote, Velvet Taco CEO Chris Schultz shares lessons from more than 30 years of building brands that inspire deep loyalty. Drawing on his experience helping grow companies like Starbucks, MOD Pizza, Voodoo Doughnut, and now Velvet Taco, Schultz explores how brands maintain a clear identity as they expand, avoid the trap of “brand drift,” and create the kinds of experiences that turn customers into devoted fans.

Part strategy and part real-world playbook, this session offers a candid look at what it takes to grow a brand without losing what made it special in the first place.

Keynote Speaker
Chris Schultz
CEO
Velvet Taco
Chris Schultz is the CEO of Velvet Taco and has spent more than 30 years building brands that people don’t just like, they obsess over. Over the course of his career, he has helped build and scale some of the industry’s most distinctive brands, including Starbucks, MOD Pizza, Voodoo Doughnut, and now Velvet Taco. He began his career with Starbucks during its early expansion, supporting the company’s growth across multiple U.S. markets and internationally, later joined the founding leadership team at MOD Pizza where the brand grew from one store to more than 300 locations in the U.S. and internationally, and went on to serve as CEO of Voodoo Doughnut, where he tripled the size of the iconic brand Chris has been recognized three times by National Restaurant News as one of the industry’s Most Influential CEOs and was also recognized by the publication as one of the Most Influential Restaurant Marketers.
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