Kylie Kelce — podcast host and mother of four — is the face of The Honey Baked Ham Company's 2026 holiday season, headlining a national campaign called "Traditions That Bring Us Home" that runs across TV, streaming, digital, social, and radio through the holidays. The partnership is notable not just as a celebrity endorsement, but as the opening move in what the brand's own leadership describes as a broader marketing transformation aimed at reaching a new generation of holiday-meal shoppers.
The Brand Strategy
Chief Commercial Officer Maegan Markee framed the campaign in explicitly generational terms: "This holiday also marks the start of a broader marketing transformation for HoneyBaked — one that honors our heritage and celebrates our loyalists while finding new ways to connect with the next generation of HoneyBaked customers." For a 65-year-old chain with more than 400 locations, the challenge is familiar across foodservice retail: how to modernize brand perception without alienating a loyal core customer base built on consistency and tradition.
Kelce's connection to the brand is positioned as organic rather than transactional. Her family has long served HoneyBaked's Bone-In Ham as a holiday centerpiece, alongside sides including Cinnamon Apples — a dish her late grandmother favored and that her daughters have now adopted as their own. That kind of cross-generational menu loyalty is exactly the behavioral pattern HoneyBaked is trying to amplify. The campaign gives the brand a consumer-facing story about how holiday food rituals transfer from one generation to the next, which maps directly onto how operators and food retailers think about building repeat occasion visits.
Menu and Operations Angle
For operators watching the holiday food category, HoneyBaked's heat-and-serve model is worth noting. Culinary Director Chef Tim Ziga emphasized convenience as core to the brand promise: "The best holiday meals aren't about spending all day in the kitchen — they're about getting everyone around the table. HoneyBaked has always made that part easier." The holiday menu anchors on its signature spiral-sliced Honey Baked Ham, smoked for up to 24 hours and individually hand-glazed, alongside premium turkey breasts and a full lineup of heat-and-serve sides and desserts.
The company is encouraging advance ordering through HoneyBaked.com with scheduled in-store pickup options for Thanksgiving and the broader holiday window — a fulfillment model that has become increasingly important across the holiday meal kit and prepared foods segment as operators work to smooth demand spikes and reduce last-minute friction. With 400-plus locations, execution at scale during the holiday crunch is as much an operational story as a marketing one.
For restaurant and foodservice industry observers, HoneyBaked's campaign reflects a wider trend: heritage food brands investing in culturally resonant ambassadors whose audience skews toward younger family formers, using storytelling around tradition to justify premium price points on prepared and semi-prepared holiday meals. Whether the campaign converts brand awareness into incremental traffic will be a telling indicator of how effectively legacy chains can refresh without reinventing.
Food & Beverage Magazine has tracked the growing competition in the holiday prepared-foods space as grocery, direct-to-consumer, and specialty retail brands all compete for the same seasonal occasion.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.