Director of Operations (DOO)

Director of Operations will be charged with operationally leading and directing the continued expansion and successful evolution of this growth-oriented restaurant company. The Director of Operations must passionately embrace the Company’s creative and entrepreneurial culture and possess the “hands-on” leadership experience to guide the Company positively through periods of growth while maintaining the commitment to operational excellence and people development.

The Director of Operations is directly responsible for growing and maintaining the Yardbird Group ethos, ensuring that the cultural tenets are firmly and consistently assimilated in their people, processes, operations, decisions, and actions. The Director of Operations will work closely with the Leadership Team, Investors and Operators to ensure the commitments to the stakeholders (guests, employees, and investors) are well-defined, communicated and achieved.

Specifically, the responsibilities and qualities of the Director of Operations include the following:

Leadership

• Understand and embrace the vision, values, and culture of the company
• A culture warrior; believes in the brand wholeheartedly and implements effective strategies to enhance alignment and team commitment to strengthening the Company’s culture.

• Flexible, entrepreneurial and adaptable; comfortable working in an environment with a high rate of change, ambiguity, and growth.
• Highly operations-focused with full P&L accountability.
• Ambition to take the company's platform to the next level, creating a concept that is well-known in the industry and a bellwether for service, execution, positive work environment, talent retention, and more.
• Possess a broader interest and ability to expand leadership to other areas over time including Human Resources, Marketing, and Finance.
• Able to communicate well both up and down the corporate ladder; comfortable leading operations teams in the restaurants and conducting high-level strategic conversations with owners, investors, and developers.
• Believe in the philosophy that the team is our guest and create a great work environment that recognizes and promotes people as a top priority.

• Embrace a bottom-up company culture where associates share their ideas and opinions and are encouraged to speak their mind.
• Create a mentoring environment that will allow people to grow from within.
• Passion for hospitality and extensive experience in the full-service restaurant and bar environment.

Entrepreneurial Approach/Strategic Growth

• Ownership mentality and understanding that the organization still embodies a start-up atmosphere.
• Experience in a high growth environment beyond steady execution in an established setting.
• Exposure to concept creation and idea incubation.
• Comfortable wearing many hats and participating beyond the operations function (marketing, recruitment, retention, HR, growth/scaling the business).

Operations

• Ensure the tools, processes, and enablers are in place to deliver and execute.
• Ensure unit-level economics meet/exceed plan targets.
• Provide direction, coaching, and oversight to drive execution and performance.
• Champion development and successful implementation of the Company’s comprehensive talent acquisition, onboarding and bench-building systems to ensure operational readiness for short and long-term new unit growth.
• Experience with collecting and measuring guest feedback in a systematic manner.
• Experience with high volume locations in a fine dining setting.
• Consistently assess and act on performance, opportunities, and industry trends, for continual improvement.
• Consistently assess people, processes, and technology to ensure overall performance, effectiveness, and adherence to culture and values.
• Instill a clear focus on operational excellence through maintaining the highest standards for operations training at all levels.
• Provide direction, coaching, and oversight on new restaurant openings; ensure effective and efficient openings (timelines, budgets, guest satisfaction).
• Help develop and implement tools that allow for precise management of labor.

Service and Culinary

• Preferably, understand American cuisine; passionate about the food with a strong culinary sensibility.
• Service-oriented, coupled with an understanding of how to most efficiently run a high-volume operation.
• Recognize the importance of staying relevant and interesting in each market; continually reinvesting resources into the culinary and beverage programs.

Marketing

• Demonstrate a clear understanding and ability to maximize the Yardbird Group brand strengths and enhance competitive brand differentiation through tailoring concept to local markets, ensuring that each location brings the unique attributes of their market to the table.
• Provide overall direction and support to drive alignment and collaboration between operations and marketing.
• Work cross-functionally to guarantee alignment, consistent execution, and a persistent approach to ensure the rollout of initiatives and monitoring of results and impacts.
• Provide direction, coaching, and oversight of new restaurant openings/new market penetration strategies, plans, and execution.
• Assess marketing performance and resource allocation.

Travel Expectation

• 30-40% of time spent on the road; a balance of time working from the Dallas - Fort Worth restaurant.

Reporting Relationships

The Director of Operations will report to the COO.

Professional Qualifications

The ideal candidate will possess the following:

• Bachelor’s Degree in business, hospitality or related field.
• 15 + years of progressively more responsible leadership experience in the restaurant industry.
• Fine dining / fine casual segment experience with chef-driven menus, significant alcohol mix, and high culinary execution - preferably at a national or regional enterprise (total revenue $35M+, multi-unit, or multi-concept).
• Holistic operational leadership experience in the discipline of operations (leading multiple restaurants across a distributed geography).
• Culinary/Hospitality/Service/Training: Development, Human Resources, Marketing, and Finance.
• Growth/Scale: Understands how to scale a growing concept and ensure brand identity remains intact. Involvement with unit growth and development, and a deep understanding of organizational capabilities and requirements (capacity management).
• Strategic Interactions: Direct experience working with ownership, development team and investors. Strong presentation skills; will present to board at quarterly meetings.
• Financial Management: Deep understanding of budgeting, restaurant P&L, and basic accounting and finance.
• People Leadership/Management: Effective coach, mentor, and communicator. A culture builder who values people and understands how to build, maintain, and grow relationships

o    Balance entrepreneurship and scalable governance and process.

o    Possess a work ethic that embodies “above and beyond”; getting the job done no matter what it takes.

o    Ability and desire to coach and develop others.

o    Ability to balance strategy, analytics, and hands-on execution.

o    High integrity.

o    Tough-minded / Ability to take constructive criticism.

o    Ability to influence others.

o    Ability to work effectively within multiple levels of an organization.

o    Brand Ambassador - represents the enterprise (culture and values).

Director of Operations will be charged with operationally leading and directing the continued expansion and successful evolution of this growth-oriented restaurant company. The Director of Operations must passionately embrace the Company’s creative and entrepreneurial culture and possess the “hands-on” leadership experience to guide the Company positively through periods of growth while maintaining the commitment to operational excellence and people development.

The Director of Operations is directly responsible for growing and maintaining the Yardbird Group ethos, ensuring that the cultural tenets are firmly and consistently assimilated in their people, processes, operations, decisions, and actions. The Director of Operations will work closely with the Leadership Team, Investors and Operators to ensure the commitments to the stakeholders (guests, employees, and investors) are well-defined, communicated and achieved.

Specifically, the responsibilities and qualities of the Director of Operations include the following:

Leadership

• Understand and embrace the vision, values, and culture of the company
• A culture warrior; believes in the brand wholeheartedly and implements effective strategies to enhance alignment and team commitment to strengthening the Company’s culture.

• Flexible, entrepreneurial and adaptable; comfortable working in an environment with a high rate of change, ambiguity, and growth.
• Highly operations-focused with full P&L accountability.
• Ambition to take the company's platform to the next level, creating a concept that is well-known in the industry and a bellwether for service, execution, positive work environment, talent retention, and more.
• Possess a broader interest and ability to expand leadership to other areas over time including Human Resources, Marketing, and Finance.
• Able to communicate well both up and down the corporate ladder; comfortable leading operations teams in the restaurants and conducting high-level strategic conversations with owners, investors, and developers.
• Believe in the philosophy that the team is our guest and create a great work environment that recognizes and promotes people as a top priority.

• Embrace a bottom-up company culture where associates share their ideas and opinions and are encouraged to speak their mind.
• Create a mentoring environment that will allow people to grow from within.
• Passion for hospitality and extensive experience in the full-service restaurant and bar environment.

Entrepreneurial Approach/Strategic Growth

• Ownership mentality and understanding that the organization still embodies a start-up atmosphere.
• Experience in a high growth environment beyond steady execution in an established setting.
• Exposure to concept creation and idea incubation.
• Comfortable wearing many hats and participating beyond the operations function (marketing, recruitment, retention, HR, growth/scaling the business).

Operations

• Ensure the tools, processes, and enablers are in place to deliver and execute.
• Ensure unit-level economics meet/exceed plan targets.
• Provide direction, coaching, and oversight to drive execution and performance.
• Champion development and successful implementation of the Company’s comprehensive talent acquisition, onboarding and bench-building systems to ensure operational readiness for short and long-term new unit growth.
• Experience with collecting and measuring guest feedback in a systematic manner.
• Experience with high volume locations in a fine dining setting.
• Consistently assess and act on performance, opportunities, and industry trends, for continual improvement.
• Consistently assess people, processes, and technology to ensure overall performance, effectiveness, and adherence to culture and values.
• Instill a clear focus on operational excellence through maintaining the highest standards for operations training at all levels.
• Provide direction, coaching, and oversight on new restaurant openings; ensure effective and efficient openings (timelines, budgets, guest satisfaction).
• Help develop and implement tools that allow for precise management of labor.

Service and Culinary

• Preferably, understand American cuisine; passionate about the food with a strong culinary sensibility.
• Service-oriented, coupled with an understanding of how to most efficiently run a high-volume operation.
• Recognize the importance of staying relevant and interesting in each market; continually reinvesting resources into the culinary and beverage programs.

Marketing

• Demonstrate a clear understanding and ability to maximize the Yardbird Group brand strengths and enhance competitive brand differentiation through tailoring concept to local markets, ensuring that each location brings the unique attributes of their market to the table.
• Provide overall direction and support to drive alignment and collaboration between operations and marketing.
• Work cross-functionally to guarantee alignment, consistent execution, and a persistent approach to ensure the rollout of initiatives and monitoring of results and impacts.
• Provide direction, coaching, and oversight of new restaurant openings/new market penetration strategies, plans, and execution.
• Assess marketing performance and resource allocation.

Travel Expectation

• 30-40% of time spent on the road; a balance of time working from the Dallas - Fort Worth restaurant.

Reporting Relationships

The Director of Operations will report to the COO.

Professional Qualifications

The ideal candidate will possess the following:

• Bachelor’s Degree in business, hospitality or related field.
• 15 + years of progressively more responsible leadership experience in the restaurant industry.
• Fine dining / fine casual segment experience with chef-driven menus, significant alcohol mix, and high culinary execution - preferably at a national or regional enterprise (total revenue $35M+, multi-unit, or multi-concept).
• Holistic operational leadership experience in the discipline of operations (leading multiple restaurants across a distributed geography).
• Culinary/Hospitality/Service/Training: Development, Human Resources, Marketing, and Finance.
• Growth/Scale: Understands how to scale a growing concept and ensure brand identity remains intact. Involvement with unit growth and development, and a deep understanding of organizational capabilities and requirements (capacity management).
• Strategic Interactions: Direct experience working with ownership, development team and investors. Strong presentation skills; will present to board at quarterly meetings.
• Financial Management: Deep understanding of budgeting, restaurant P&L, and basic accounting and finance.
• People Leadership/Management: Effective coach, mentor, and communicator. A culture builder who values people and understands how to build, maintain, and grow relationships

o    Balance entrepreneurship and scalable governance and process.

o    Possess a work ethic that embodies “above and beyond”; getting the job done no matter what it takes.

o    Ability and desire to coach and develop others.

o    Ability to balance strategy, analytics, and hands-on execution.

o    High integrity.

o    Tough-minded / Ability to take constructive criticism.

o    Ability to influence others.

o    Ability to work effectively within multiple levels of an organization.

o    Brand Ambassador - represents the enterprise (culture and values).