The Ambassador Play
The Honey Baked Ham Company has signed Kylie Kelce — podcast host and mother of four — as its holiday 2026 brand ambassador, pairing the 65-year-old heritage ham brand with one of consumer media's more recognizable family-lifestyle voices. The partnership anchors a new campaign, "Traditions That Bring Us Home," designed to reach a younger generation of holiday hosts while retaining the brand's established loyalist base across more than 400 U.S. locations.
The campaign spans television, streaming, digital, social media, and radio and runs through the end of the holiday season. Maegan Markee, Chief Commercial Officer at The Honey Baked Ham Company, described the initiative as the opening move in a "broader marketing transformation" — language that signals a strategic shift in how the Atlanta-based retailer plans to invest in brand equity heading into its most commercially critical selling window. Thanksgiving and Christmas together represent the overwhelming majority of annual volume for specialty holiday-meal operators.
Why the Pairing
Kelce's connection to the brand is presented as organic rather than transactional. According to the company, HoneyBaked products — including the signature Bone-In Ham and Cinnamon Apples side — have appeared on her family's holiday table for years, predating the commercial relationship. That authenticity calculus is increasingly central to food and beverage brands competing for attention in a crowded influencer marketplace, where audiences have grown skeptical of partnerships that lack demonstrable product affinity.
Markee framed Kelce as representative of a consumer cohort that is "taking the traditions they grew up with and making them their own" — a positioning that maps directly onto the brand's multigenerational narrative. For operators and foodservice observers, the move reflects a wider industry pattern: heritage food brands investing in personality-driven marketing to counteract private-label encroachment and shifting retail dynamics during peak seasons. Sister coverage on consumer and brand trends in the food sector has documented similar pivots among legacy center-of-plate proteins.
Menu and Ordering Window
The campaign also serves a commercial function: driving early pre-orders ahead of Thanksgiving and Christmas. HoneyBaked's holiday lineup includes its spiral-sliced Honey Baked Ham, smoked for up to 24 hours and individually hand-glazed, alongside premium turkey breasts, heat-and-serve sides such as Double Cheddar Mac & Cheese and Maple Sweet Potato Souffle, and desserts. Customers can order now at HoneyBaked.com and schedule in-store pickup at a later date, a fulfillment model designed to smooth demand spikes at retail.
Culinary Director Chef Tim Ziga emphasized the brand's convenience positioning — meals that reduce kitchen time and center the gathering experience — a message calibrated to busy households that remain the core HoneyBaked customer. The heat-and-serve format has gained sustained traction across the specialty food retail segment as dual-income households prioritize time over scratch cooking, a trend tracked in depth by Food & Beverage Magazine and reflected in category-level growth data for premium prepared foods. Additional analysis on holiday meal retail dynamics is available in our food retail and seasonal planning coverage.
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.
