Hayley Yew has stepped down as head of customer development at Coca-Cola Beverages Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, ending a seven-year tenure with the Coca-Cola system.
Yew joined the business in 2019 and took charge of customer development in January 2024, with responsibility for modern trade across hypermarkets, supermarkets, mini markets and eCommerce. Her role put her close to one of the most important commercial functions in a beverage business: converting brand demand into retail execution.
Her remit covered customer strategy and revenue growth management, while an earlier role as head of on-premise and business development focused on key accounts and the recovery of foodservice channels after the pandemic. According to her LinkedIn profile, she also worked on digital transformation initiatives that tripled merchant transactions across food aggregator platforms.
That experience matters because Coca-Cola is placing increasing weight on how its brands perform at the point of purchase. The company said earlier this year that its global operating changes would put greater emphasis on customer and commercial leadership, alongside faster use of digital capabilities across the business.
The same commercial logic is visible in Africa. Coca-Cola’s World Cup packaging strategy shows how the company is using packaging to create retail relevance, while its African bottling system continues to expand the use of data and customer segmentation to improve execution. Coca-Cola HBC reported that its Nigeria operation was using consumer and customer data to tailor communication and in-store execution.
Drinkabl.media has also tracked how Coca-Cola’s African business is moving customer and consumer intelligence closer to portfolio decisions. Wellingtone Ogolla’s Coca-Cola portfolio role examined the elevation of insights work within Coca-Cola’s East, Central and Anglophone African franchise.
The regional picture makes Yew’s departure more than a personnel update. Customer development now sits at the intersection of modern retail, foodservice, eCommerce and data-led execution, as beverage companies compete for visibility and throughput across increasingly fragmented channels.
Her next move has not been announced. For Coca-Cola’s Southeast Asian operation, the immediate question is who takes over a commercial function increasingly tied to how quickly the company can translate consumer demand into customer-level growth.
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