Randy Pianin

Randy Pianin is an accomplished executive with over 30 years of progressive Finance, Accounting and Operations experience in public and privately owned companies in the restaurant, retail, transportation, e-commerce and consumer products and services industries. He has significant public accounting experience, serving SEC and privately held companies. Randy is a recognized leader in developing strategic vision, resulting from his keen operations and merchandising sense combined with strong financial and analytical skills. He has a proven track record in driving profitability through creativity and innovation. Randy is a dynamic leader and a catalyst for success who quickly gains the support of others by building trust and rapport. He excels at building high performance teams by strengthening morale, promoting teamwork and earning the respect and loyalty of subordinates. He has strong communication skills and has experience working with all levels of an organization: from the Board of Directors through hourly associates. Randy is highly regarded for integrity and maintains the highest standards of honesty and ethics.
Randy grew up in Merrick, a suburb of New York City. Earned his BBA in Accounting from Emory University in Atlanta, GA. Randy moved back to New York to start his career in public accounting with Touche Ross (which later became Deloitte & Touche) and specialized in serving multi-location retail companies. During his tenure at Deloitte & Touche, Randy was selected to participate in a company sponsored program in which he earned his MBA in Finance from Columbia University. After 10 years in New York, Deloitte & Touche moved Randy to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to lead the audit of Office Depot, Inc., which was over $2 billion in revenue and growing rapidly. During this time, Randy gained his first exposure to the Quick Serve Industry while auditing the Arby’s Company.
After serving on the Office Depot audit engagement for over three years, Randy left public accounting and went to work for Office Depot in 2007. He began as an Accounting Director and was quickly promoted to Vice President. Randy’s operational and merchandising prowess combined with his strong financial acumen contributed to his development of a Finance group that supported the Merchandising and Marketing departments within Office Depot’s North American businesses that were generating over $8 billion in revenue. In 2005, Randy was promoted to Senior Vice President and Global Corporate Controller where he had responsibility for global financial statement consolidation, Sarbanes Oxley compliance, SEC reporting and financial processes and accounting for North American operations. In this role, he supervised over 300 employees. For his last two years at Office Depot, Randy moved into an Operations role, where he ran the company’s $400 million copy, print and ship business. He successfully transformed the business and outperformed the company’s other merchandise categories.
In 2009, Randy joined RailAmerica, an owner and operator of 45 short line and regional railroads to gain experience in the rapidly growing private equity world. During his 3 years at the company, Randy doubled the size of his areas of responsibility and helped the company grow by over 33%, with sales exceeding $600 million. Upon the sale of RailAmerica, Randy assisted a billion-dollar retailer through a financial restatement and brought them into compliance with SEC reporting.

In 2013, Randy became CFO of a small, rapidly growing retailer of candy and novelty items. By improving infrastructure, processes, reporting and refinancing the company’s debt, Randy helped the company more than double in size. He also drove margin improvement and cost reductions which improved overall profitability.
In 2016, Randy became CFO of JAE Restaurant Group, another rapidly growing company that owns and operates 180 Wendy’s restaurants. During his short tenure at the company to date, Randy has improved accounting processes, improved financial planning, reduced costs and strengthened controls. He was promoted to CEO in 2019.
Randy is a devoted husband to wife Amy to whom he has been married for 30 years. He is also a devoted father to his two children, Drew and Jennifer. Randy is also passionate about giving back to the community. He serves as Chairman of the Board of the Office Depot Foundation, an organization committed to helping children succeed, strengthening communities, assisting other nonprofit organizations and aiding individuals, communities and businesses with disaster relief.