Top Restaurant Marketers Q&A: Pei Wei’s Brandon Solano

Brandon Solano has been at the forefront of offbeat, brand-forward food innovation since he convinced his former bosses at The Hershey Company to release something called the Elvis Cup. As chief marketing officer of Pei Wei, Solano continues to subvert traditional tenets about messaging, image, and even ingredients, pushing boundaries to bring value to his mission for transparency and success, which he has named “the Wei Forward.” Brandon Solano is one of the executives featured on Skift Table's Top Restaurant Marketers 2019, our new franchise focused on the top marketing leaders in the restaurant industry. Skift Table: Let’s start at the beginning. Brandon Solano: I grew up in Flint, Michigan, the only child in a single-parent home, in a house that was worth $40,000. It was a pretty quiet childhood and a grounded upbringing. I scholarshipped my way out of there through graduate school for business. Skift Table: Take us through your career so far. Solano: I began as a marke