Director, Restaurant Openings & Concept Development

The Director, Restaurant Openings & Concept Development is accountable for end‑to‑end Food & Beverage (F&B) readiness for New Hotel Openings (NHOP) and Re-concept/Renovations across the Luxury & Lifestyle and Managed hotel portfolio. This role owns the F&B concept development process, critical path, and governance, ensuring concepts are brand‑aligned, market‑relevant, operationally viable, and delivered on time to support development timelines. 

Concept development serves as the primary upstream input into restaurant openings readiness. The role operates primarily as a process owner and orchestrator, coordinating internal stakeholders and external agency partners, while selectively leading creative concept development for halo assets and priority projects where bespoke differentiation is required.

Your day to day 

NHOP F&B Readiness & Governance

• Owns NHOP F&B critical path and governance, serving as the single point of accountability for F&B readiness milestones.
• Coordinate with key internal and external stakeholders including Design, Operations, Commercial, Development, etc.
• Accountable for all NHOP F&B readiness deliverables, including: 
  • Concept sign‑off where applicable
  • Agency alignment
  • Design and development inputs
  • Menu and bar readiness
  • Training schedule, timeline and delivery 
• Ensures alignment between F&B concept development milestones and overall development timelines.
• Leads issue resolution and escalation to maintain schedule, quality, and readiness standards.
• Manages deployment schedules for F&B task force and works in tandem with finance to ensure task force program is billed accordingly

Concept Development

• Serves as process owner and orchestrator for agency‑led and internally created concept development
• Defines scope, briefs, timelines, and governance for external agency partners.
• Oversees agency outputs to ensure alignment with brand intent, market context, operational feasibility, and cost discipline.
• Owns and maintains relationships with third party agency from approved/preferred partner lists.
• Acts as the readiness gatekeeper for concept progression prior to Brand and Operations sign‑off.
• Personally leads creative concept development for select halo assets and priority projects.
• Develops or directly shapes for halo / select in-house bespoke concept development: 
  • Market Research
  • Concept narrative and positioning
  • Menu and bar direction
  • Guest experience intent
• Serves as the strategic owner of scalable F&B concepts across the L&L portfolio. 
• Owns the evolution, adaptation, and readiness of core concepts for deployment across markets. 
• Ensures concepts remain commercially relevant, operationally viable, and aligned to brand intent. 
• Partners with Brand, Design, and Operations to translate concepts into deployable toolkits and NHOP‑ready assets.
• Attend development pitches and represent the Food & Beverage organization to potential owners
• Communicate status updates to ownership groups and internal stakeholders on NHOP and Concept readiness and timelines

What we need from you

• Bachelor’s degree preferred. Experience leading cross-functional teams in a global hospitality company
• At least 10 ye