CHARLOTTE, N.C.-Driven Brands Inc. has promoted Danny Rivera, chief information officer since 2012, to president of its Meineke Car Care Centers L.L.C. brand, filling a position vacated by Paul Clayton in June.
“The Meineke executive team believes that throughout the past two years, (Mr. Rivera's) leadership expertise and energy has played a major role in strengthening the Meineke brand,” said Driven Brands CEO Jonathan Fitzpatrick, who cited Mr. Rivera's “terrific track record” as a basis for his promotion.
Mr. Rivera also was executive vice president of Meineke since June.
“I look forward to working together to continue strengthening our franchise system where our franchisees enjoy superb center-level profitability and customers benefit from Meineke's total car care expertise,” he said.
Driven Brands declined to comment on the circumstances of Mr. Clayton leaving the company in June. He had been president of Meineke since October 2012, when he was hired. He now is CEO of Unami Restaurant Group L.L.C. of Los Angeles, according to his LinkedIn page.
Prior to joining Driven Brands in October 2012, Mr. Rivera worked at AutoNation, one of the world's largest car dealership chains, and prior to that worked at GE, Motorola and Burger King Corp.
There are more than 900 Meineke Car Care Center locations operating in North America, servicing 3 million cars a year, Driven Brands said.
Meineke won top franchise rankings from Forbes, Franchise Times and Entrepreneur Magazine and recently was named the most successful “national-to-local” enterprise digital marketer in the U.S.
Meineke is considered the most successful “national-to-local” enterprise digital marketer in the U.S., according to a ranking compiled by Placeable L.L.C., a “marketing automation provider” for national brands, which used local search- and location-based criteria to assess marketing performance.
Placeable said it evaluated more than 1,000 brands on key factors such as website visibility, depth of online content, location data precision and reach across search engines, social networks and directories in determining its top 150.
Placeable didn't provide specifics as to why Meineke placed No.1. Other companies ranked in the automotive category were:
c Speedee Oil Change & Auto Service, No. 13;
c Mavis Discount Tire, No. 20;
c Gerber Collision & Glass, No. 56;
c Sunoco Retail, No. 103;
c Kwik Trip Inc., No. 131; and
c Travel Centers of America L.L.C., No. 150.