Director of Culinary Program Management

About This Role

This role is a critical integrator, translating culinary strategy into scalable, executable, and operationally sound outcomes within the restaurant environment. It owns the end-to-end planning, governance, and execution of culinary initiatives, ensuring clear processes and cross-functional collaboration while maintaining operational excellence.

Responsibilities

• Lead the review, definition, and documentation of culinary roles, responsibilities, processes, and standards across Culinary R&D and Culinary Operations
• Identify process gaps, redundancies, or breakdowns and develop new or refined processes to support scalability and consistency
• Manage day-to-day planning, execution, and oversight of culinary and food & beverage initiatives from concept through implementation
• Establish and manage stage-gate milestones, validations, and approval checkpoints
• Own and manage in-field culinary testing strategy, execution, and evaluation
• Partner with Product and Menu Management to align on required culinary deliverables and timelines
• Lead the Culinary Integration forum and drive alignment between Culinary R&D, Culinary Operations and key stakeholders
• Shepherd menu items through concept, testing, costing, sourcing, training, approval, and launch
• Partner with IT, Culinary R&D, Culinary Operations, Finance, and Supply Chain to ensure system and data owners are aligned
• Partner with Operations Integration to ensure restaurants receive clear, accurate, and timely guidance for culinary rollouts

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in project management or consulting, ideally within multi-unit restaurant, hospitality, or food & beverage environments
• 5+ years leading complex, cross-functional projects/programs
• Ability to translate culinary strategy into operationally viable plans for execution, working with cross functional teams
• Strong communication skills
• Bachelor’s degree in hospitality management, Culinary Arts, Operations, Business, or related field; or equivalent experience
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite and project management tools (MS Project, Smartsheets)

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in hospitality management, Culinary Arts, Operations, Business, or related field; or equivalent experience
• 10+ years of experience in project management or consulting, ideally within multi-unit restaurant, hospitality, or food & beverage environments; 5+ years leading complex, cross-functional projects/programs

Skills

* Required skills

Benefits