Director of Culinary

Job Title: Director of Culinary


Location: Detroit, MI
Travel: Regular travel to restaurant locations and new openings


A growing, multi-brand hospitality group is seeking an accomplished Director of Culinary to provide strategic culinary leadership across its portfolio of distinctive restaurant concepts.

This is an opportunity for a sophisticated culinary leader who understands that exceptional food is only one part of building an exceptional restaurant organization. Our client is looking for someone who can translate culinary vision into repeatable systems, strong financial performance, developed leaders, consistent execution, and memorable guest experiences across multiple concepts and locations.

The Director of Culinary will partner closely with senior leadership, Operations, Executive Chefs, and restaurant-level culinary leaders to establish and protect standards while building the infrastructure necessary to support continued growth.

This is not a corporate desk job.

The right leader will be strategic enough to think across an entire organization while remaining connected to what is actually happening inside the restaurants. You'll develop chefs, analyze financial performance, build systems, evaluate menus, negotiate with vendors, support kitchen design, participate in restaurant openings-and still be willing to step into an operation when the team needs hands-on leadership.

The goal is not simply to create great food.

It's to build a culinary organization capable of delivering great food consistently, profitably, and at scale.

Benefits:

• Competitive executive compensation
• Performance-based bonus opportunity
• Competitive medical, dental, and vision insurance plans
• Flexible Spending Account and dependent care account
• Generous paid time off
• Flexible scheduling
• Research and development allowance
• Professional development assistance
• Restaurant dining discounts and meal benefits
• Relocation assistance available for the right candidate
• Opportunity to directly influence the culinary direction and continued growth of a multi-brand hospitality organization

Day in the Life:

• Provide strategic culinary leadership and accountability across multiple restaurant concepts and locations
• Establish, document, implement, and continually improve culinary SOPs and operating standards across the organization
• Protect the unique identity of each concept while creating systems that allow the organization to execute consistently at scale
• Maintain a visible, hands-on presence in restaurant operations and regularly partner with Executive Chefs and culinary leadership
• Develop best practices for receiving, storage, product care, production, pars, ordering, purchasing, and overall material utilization
• Conduct and continually improve culinary and facility audits, identify trends, and ensure corrective action plans are completed
• Provide direction and leadership around menu development while ensuring new items are creative, executable, profitable, and aligned with each concept
• Establish strong recipe governance, including recipe accuracy, documentation, intellectual property, testing, training, and rollout
• Evaluate menu performance through product mix, profitability, operational feasibility, guest feedback, dining trends, and brand direction
• Oversee the development, coaching, and performance of Executive Chefs and other culinary leaders
• Recruit culinary leadership talent regionally and nationally and build a strong succession pipeline for continued growth
• Partner with Operations and Human Resources to strengthen culinary training, development, performance management, and accountability
• Develop food and labor budgets, forecasts, and action plans in partnership with Operations
• Read and interpret P&Ls and use financial and operational data to identify risks, opportunities, and corrective actions
• Monitor food cost, labor, inventory accuracy, purchasing compliance, waste, pars, and material consumption
• Build and maintain strong vendor relationships and negotiate product quality, pricing, service levels, and contract terms
• Protect food safety, sanitation, allergen, regulatory, and health department standards across every location
• Partner with construction and development leadership on kitchen layouts, equipment plans, workflow, fixtures, and operational design
• Participate in the sourcing and standardization of culinary equipment across the organization
• Lead culinary readiness for every new restaurant opening
• Develop opening systems, recipes, schedules, training documentation, production standards, vendor relationships, and inventory processes
• Recruit and develop opening teams and verify operational readiness before launch
• Provide hands-on leadership through openings and stabilization periods
• Continually evaluate the culinary organization and identify what needs to change today to successfully support tomorrow's growth

The internal position specifically owns standards and systems across concepts, recipe governance and menu execution, development of culinary leadership, financial stewardship and vendor management, food safety and facilities, and culinary readiness for every new restaurant opening.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of successful multi-unit culinary leadership or food & beverage management experience within hospitality
• Significant experience overseeing culinary operations across multiple restaurants, concepts, or markets
• Strong culinary foundation and sophisticated understanding of product quality, technique, and concept-driven menu execution
• Demonstrated ability to operate strategically while maintaining credibility and connection with restaurant-level culinary teams
• Proven success creating, documenting, training, auditing, and continuously improving culinary SOPs
• Strong experience developing Executive Chefs and other culinary leaders
• Demonstrated ability to recruit, coach, motivate, teach, and hold high-performing teams accountable
• Experience guiding menu development and engineering items for quality, profitability, operational feasibility, and consistent execution
• Strong recipe development, documentation, scaling, costing, and implementation experience
• Strong financial acumen with the ability to read and create P&Ls, budgets, and forecasts
• Demonstrated success managing food cost, labor, inventory, purchasing, and profitability
• Strong understanding of purchasing controls and vendor management
• Experience negotiating with vendors and developing scalable regional or national supplier relationships preferred
• Experience supporting restaurant openings and growth initiatives
• Experience with kitchen design, equipment selection, workflow, and operational planning preferred
• Strong understanding of HACCP, food safety, sanitation, health department, and regulatory standards
• Working understanding of beverage operations
• Proficiency with Google Workspace and inventory, purchasing, recipe, and financial-management systems
• Current food-safety certification or ability to obtain and maintain required certification
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills
• Strategic problem-solving ability with a results-driven mindset
• Highly organized, adaptable, resourceful, disciplined, and detail-oriented
• Ability and willingness to travel regularly between restaurant locations and participate in new openings
• Ability to work a varied hospitality schedule, including nights, weekends, holidays, and high-demand opening periods

The internal qualifications call for at least five years of multi-unit culinary/F&B leadership, P&L and forecasting capability, menu engineering and recipe scaling, SOP development, strong people leadership, technology proficiency, and food-safety certification.

The Ideal Candidate:


You started as a chef, but somewhere along the way you became a builder of chefs, systems, teams, and businesses.

You still care deeply about the food. You know what exceptional ingredients, technique, preparation, and presentation look like. You can taste a dish and recognize immediately when something isn't right.

But your first instinct isn't always to grab a sauté pan and fix it yourself.

You ask why it happened.

Was the recipe unclear? Was the team improperly trained? Is receiving inconsistent? Is there a purchasing issue? Is the Executive Chef struggling to create accountability? Is the same problem happening at three other restaurants?

Then you build the solution.

You understand that successful multi-unit culinary leadership means creating standards strong enough to deliver consistency while leaving enough room for each restaurant to retain its own identity.

You're equally comfortable tasting a new menu item, coaching an Executive Chef, analyzing food-cost variance, reviewing a P&L, negotiating with a vendor, evaluating a kitchen layout, building an SOP, or standing alongside a team during a demanding restaurant opening.

And you're a developer of people. You don't want an organization that depends on you to personally solve every problem. You want to build talented culinary leaders who know the standards, understand the business, develop their own teams, and take genuine ownership of their restaurants.

Success here is measurable: stronger sales and guest satisfaction, disciplined food and labor costs, accurate inventory, profitable and executable menus, stronger culinary leadership, successful restaurant openings, dependable vendor partnerships, and consistent operational standards across the portfolio.

If you're ready to take everything you've learned inside great kitchens and apply it to building a great culinary organization, we'd love to hear from you.