Job Description

Lead operations at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) as the Executive Director of Operations with HMSHost by Avolta , overseeing a diverse portfolio of restaurants, commissaries, and warehouses. You will drive operational excellence, maintain high-quality standards, and ensure profitability. As a key leader, you'll collaborate with airport authorities and stakeholders to optimize performance and cultivate a culture of success across all locations.

In this role, you'll direct operational activities across one of the company’s largest and most complex airport locations, ensuring that restaurants are clean, well-staffed, profitable, and aligned with brand standards. You'll build and maintain strong relationships with landlord staff, contribute to the development of a high-performing team, and create a best-in-industry work culture.

Essential Functions :

• Partners with the Vice President of Operations at a strategic level about operations decisions, people matter, and strategy issues. Communicates their leadership vision and goals to the restaurant managers and staff within their airport
• Serves as primary operations liaison with Airport Authority/Landlord on all operations matters
• Partners with the Development function to optimize the landlord relationship
• Reads and understands daily, weekly, and period-end financial and operational data to monitor progress towards zone goals; recognizes outliers from period to period, investigates anomalies, directs managers toward specific corrective actions. Reads and understands all applicable brand standards, CBAs, landlord lease agreements, and all company procedures and protocols to maximize brand/landlord/labor relations, and ensures Airport restaurant managers understand and are equipped to execute to these standards; Ensures GMs are leading and managing daily operations using brand and company tools, resources, guides, forms, processes, etc.
• Coaches zone leaders, commissary, maintenance and warehouse staff, assistant managers, Assistant General Managers, and General Managers to profitably operate and maintain restaurants within all brand and company standards; makes performance-based decisions to optimize revenue and profitability; uses broad discretion and judgment to make great leadership decisions
• Interviews candidates for staff, Managers and General Managers, and other key jobs; makes hiring, termination, advancement, promotion, and other status-change recommendations to DO/SDO for associates within the zone. Ensures company and branch diversity goals are actively executed within the restaurants in the zone; participates in branch-wide staffing/planning
• Ensures managers of each functional area of the Airport have a leader/decision-maker and that all restaurants, commissaries, and warehouses have a person in charge on-site during all operating hours.
• Assesses skill levels of staff and zone leaders and recommends job or career-based training/education; recognizes, understands, and utilizes subordinate leaders’ strengths and weaknesses; provides ongoing feedback and coaching that aligns with established individual-development goals and business goals
• Ensures effective developmental store visits are conducted with each GM once a quarter, ensures all associates and managers are onboarded effectively, provides ongoing coaching and development as part of daily routine
• Directs local and company recognition initiatives and motivates and recognizes operations staff for their contributions and performance towards meeting location/branch goals
• Uses experience, judgment, and discretion to resolve complex customer and associate conflict and problems and determines when to refer more complex issues to corporate resources
• Understands the roles of and consults with HR, Finance, Loss Prevention, Supply Chain, and all other regional or branch-wide staff functions before key decisions are executed
• Ensures airport/location leaders maintain a working knowledge of federal, state, and local sanitary, safety, and health standards; understands the Manager’s Guide to Associate Health and Safety

Minimum Qualifications, Knowledge, Skills, and Work Environment :

• Requires 10 or more years as a successful restaurant operations leader or substantially equivalent business experience with P&L responsibility and a proven track record in a leadership capacity with multi-unit, multi-brand restaurant operations, simultaneously operating over 30 restaurants
• Requires a demonstrated successful track record managing highly visible relationships with both public and private clients and stakeholders (City Councils, Airport authorities, developers, landlords, DBEs, Unions, and joint venture partners)
• Requires experience managing subordinate leaders and holding them accountable for commitments, performance, and outcomes
• Requires a demonstrated successful track record creating and communicating a strategic vision, and then mobilizing a team to deliver concrete and measurable results against the Company’s strategy and goals
• Requires proven sales growth and operating profit, while continuously improving customer delight, associate engagement, and landlord satisfaction
• Requires a demonstrated commitment to developing restaurant leadership talent, adopting, and embodying best-in-class employee engagement practices, and building a diverse and inclusive team and work environment
• Requires demonstrated business and financial acumen, through the understanding and application of Variance Analysis, Trend Analysis, and Analysis of Return on Investment to the level expected to oversee over $100M in restaurant operations

Disclaimer :

All job requirements are subject to change to reflect the evolving position requirements or to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities. Some requirements may exclude individuals who pose a threat or risk to the health and safety of themselves or other employees. This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to which will be required in this position. Employees will be required to follow other job-related duties as requested by their supervisor/manager (within guidelines and compliance with Federal and State Laws). Continued employment remains on an “at-will” basis.

Avolta, including Dufry, HMSHost Corporation, Hudson, and affiliates (“the Company”), is an equal opportunity employer. It is the Company’s policy to ensure equal employment opportunity in all aspects of employment and to comply with anti-discrimination laws and regulations. The Company prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type and provides equal opportunities to applicants and team members without regard to actual or perceived race, color, creed, age, religion, sex or gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, related medical conditions and lactation), gender identity or gender expression (including transgender status), sexual orientation, national origin, disability, military service and veteran status, ancestry, citizenship status, marital status, protected medical condition as defined by applicable state or local law, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state or local laws and ordinances (referred to as “protected characteristics”).

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