TORONTO — General Assembly Holdings Ltd. (GA Pizza), a Toronto-based fast-casual pizza restaurant turned omnichannel consumer packaged goods brand, is expanding its leadership team to accelerate the company’s growth into retail channels.

Katharine Joakim has been named chief financial officer. Ms. Joakim brings over a decade of experience leading finance functions at such organizations as Tsavo Media and Fibernetics.

Brendan Beamish has been hired as director of sales. Mr. Beamish most recently was in charge of national accounts and white space development for Walmart, foodservice and emerging channels at Nature’s Path Foods. Earlier, he was a category trade manager at J.M. Smucker Co. He also spent many years at Steam Whistle Brewing.

Ryan Donik joins the company as senior vice president of marketing. Mr. Donik has more than a decade of experience optimizing the marketing efforts behind premium brands. Prior to joining GA Pizza, he was at Samsung Canada, where he led digital and traditional marketing for the company’s consumer electronics divisions. Before that, he worked at Loblaw Companies Ltd.

Eric Hacke has been promoted to the new role of senior vice president of technology. Mr. Hacke joined GA Pizza in early 2021 as vice president of software engineering. Before that, he worked as founder and lead developer for a series of startups and mid-sized tech companies, building new products for such organizations as Honeywell, Voiceflow and Xero.

“These four appointments strengthen GA Pizza’s bench as we ready ourselves for the strong long-term growth expected to come from our shift towards being an omnichannel CPG brand, with a focus on grocery retail,” said Ali Khan Lalani, founder and chief executive officer of GA Pizza. “Their collective experiences leading CPG brands and scaling businesses will help us grow into our next phase — particularly, scaling the number of stores that carry our delicious pizzas — and better position us on our path toward profitability.”