Cooper's Hawk Winery and Restaurants · 7 hours ago
Director of Culinary Program Management
Downers Grove, IL
Full-time
Hybrid
Director/Executive
$140K/yr - $180K/yr
10+ years expCooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurants is looking for a Director of Culinary Program Management to ensure culinary strategy is executed effectively across their restaurants. This role involves overseeing culinary initiatives from ideation to implementation, ensuring operational excellence and collaboration across multiple teams.
Food and BeverageRetailWine And SpiritsWinery
Responsibilities
Lead the review, definition, and documentation of culinary roles, responsibilities, processes, and standards across both Culinary R&D and Culinary Operations
Identify process gaps, redundancies, or breakdowns, and develop new or refined processes where needed to support scalability and consistency
Establish and reinforce process adherence, governance, and accountability across culinary initiatives
Ensure standards are practical, operationally viable, and clearly communicated
Manage day-to-day planning, execution, and oversight of culinary and food & beverage initiatives from concept through implementation and sustainment
Translate culinary strategy into clear project plans with defined scope, timelines, dependencies, risks, and success metrics
Establish and manage stage-gate milestones, validations, and approval checkpoints to ensure readiness before progression
Provide clear visibility into project status, risks, and decisions for leadership and cross-functional partners
Support and/or lead culinary simplification initiative
Own and manage in-field culinary testing strategy, execution, and evaluation
Ensure testing processes are structured, measurable, and aligned to both R&D objectives and operational realities
Partner with Culinary R&D, Culinary Ops, Supply Chain, Finance, and Operations Integration to ensure testing outcomes drive informed decisions
Oversee field communications, measurement, tracking, and post-test recommendations
Partner with Product and Menu Management to align on required culinary deliverables and timelines, ensuring the culinary vertical provides accurate, complete, and validated inputs to support menu strategy, cycle planning, decision-making, and launch readiness
Ensure culinary teams are aligned to menu cycle milestones, deliverables, and approval timelines
Support menu development, tasting cadence, and efficiency planning in partnership with Culinary R&D and Culinary Operations
Serve as a formal bridge from innovation to execution, ensuring clean handoffs from development into Culinary Operations
Ensure accurate creation, validation, and distribution of culinary specifications, SOPs, and training materials
Create alignment with culinary system owners (e.g. Crunchtime, RecipeViewer, Simphony)
Lead the Culinary Integration forum and drive alignment between Culinary R&D, Culinary Operations and key stakeholders
Proactively connect R&D, Ops, Supply Chain, Menu, Finance, Training, IT, and Integration teams to ensure shared understanding and readiness
Collaborate to ensure all margin- and COGS-related initiatives are documented and tracked
Communicate changes, risks, dependencies, and decisions clearly and consistently
Partner with IT, Culinary R&D, Culinary Operations, Finance, and Supply Chain to ensure system and data owners are aligned on roles, processes, and standards, enabling accurate data, reliable system execution, and scalable culinary initiatives
Ensure appropriate systems testing, validation, and sign-off occurs prior to launch
Support the development and documentation of system standards, business rules, workflows, templates, and tools that enable execution at scale
Implement and maintain complexity scoring and embed it into tasting and decision-making processes
Shepherd menu items through concept, testing, costing, sourcing, training, approval, and launch
Partner with Supply Chain and R&D to confirm product availability, quality, consistency, and operational feasibility
Facilitate cross-functional readiness reviews and final approvals
Partner with Operations Integration to ensure restaurants receive clear, accurate, and timely guidance for culinary rollouts; manage input from stakeholders
Partner with Operations Integration to respond to feedback from operations and guests to support continuous improvement
Monitor post-launch performance and support continuous improvement and optimization efforts
Qualification
Required
Must embody Cooper's Hawk values
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: can clarify decisions, risks, and dependencies; drive alignment in high ambiguity environments; and provide clear visibility to leadership
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)
Benefits
Incredible Discounts:
+ Monthly Dining Allowance
+ 50% Dining and Carryout
+ 40% Retail Wine
+ 20% Retail and Private Events
+ Monthly Complimentary Wine Tasting for Two
Medical, Prescription, Dental, Vision Insurance plus Telemedicine and Wellness Program
Company Matching 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
Flexible Savings Accounts- Health and Dependent Care
Health Savings Account
Long-Term Disability; Voluntary Short-Term Disability
Basic Life and AD&D Insurance (with option to purchase additional coverage)
Paid Parental Leave
Highly Competitive Pay plus Team Member Incentives & Rewards
Paid Time Off
Milestones Recognition Program
Complimentary Gym Membership in RSC Building
Hybrid Work Week (3 days in office, 2 days remote, depending on role)
Company
Cooper's Hawk Winery and Restaurants
Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants was created with the inspiration of bringing the Napa Valley experience to all of America, by combining an elegant tasting room with a polished casual restaurant and scratch kitchen.
5001-10000 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
unknown2019-07-24Private Equity
Leadership Team
Timothy McEnery
Founder and CEO
Recent News
Seattle TechFlash
2025-11-26
Company data provided by crunchbase