Director - Restaurant Marketing

Director, Restaurant Marketing

The Restaurant Marketing Director will play a vital role in the success of a restaurant by developing and implementing marketing strategies that align with the company's goals. This position is essential for driving brand awareness, attracting new customers, and retaining existing ones. By analyzing market trends and customer preferences, the Director of Restaurant Marketing creates promotional campaigns that enhance the restaurant's visibility and profitability. Using a mix of marketing, promotional, advertising, social media and public relation activities, the Director of Marketing will take an integrated approach to marketing planning and implementation. Acting as a brand ambassador the person must harmonize the culture, mission, values, and quality standards to ensure that all Cafes maximum potential is achieved. Interacting with employees, guests, agencies and owners this person must contribute to a positive and professional work environment.

Responsibilities

• Oversee the Marketing Managers of the Hard Rock Cafe Division.
• Design and launch restaurant-focused marketing strategies that strengthen the Hard Rock Cafe brand, drive traffic, and deliver incremental revenue.
• Create new activations that differentiate Hard Rock Cafe from competitors and resonate with diverse audiences (Gen Z, families, tourists, locals).
• Partner with Culinary, Operations and Retail teams to integrate food, beverage, merchandise, and experience into unified marketing campaigns.
• Continuously analyze restaurant and casual dining trends to identify opportunities for Hard Rock Cafe to innovate and lead.
• Work with selected agency partners the implementation of the online campaign and creative, and ensure all relevant communication is available to local teams.
• Ensure marketing strategies are operationalized in the field with clear toolkits, timelines, and measurable KPIs.
• Collaborate closely with Regional Sales & Marketing Managers, General Managers, and Operations leaders to drive local execution.
• Create scalable playbooks and best-practice models to ensure consistency across global markets, while allowing room for local adaptation.
• Oversee campaign reporting, analyzing ROI, traffic lift, and sales performance by region/location.
• Serve as a key bridge between Global Marketing and Café Operations, ensuring campaigns are practical, executable, and financially aligned.
• Manage agency and partner relationships for campaign creative, PR amplification, digital media, and influencer activations.
• Align with Finance on marketing budgets, cost allocations, and return-on-investment metrics.
• Represent Café Marketing in global brand meetings, ensuring the restaurant division is positioned as a growth driver for Hard Rock.

Qualifications

Minimum 5 years of work experience in Restaurant Marketing Director Role for an International brand. Bachelor's in marketing with experience in entertainment and food and beverage event marketing segment. Proven track record of creating and implementing high-impact marketing campaigns that delivered measurable sales growth. Strong understanding of customer engagement through digital channels for brands. Strong understanding of restaurant operations, field marketing, and the challenges of global/local execution. Understanding of relevant social media platforms and managing media activations. Ability to multitask and manage in a fast paced, changing environment. Proven capabilities in managing media plans and initiatives in an international organization. Experience working with cross-functional teams (culinary, retail, operations, PR, digital, creative agencies). Strong financial acumen; ability to link marketing initiatives to P&L impact. Ability to effectively drive results via coaching and leading a group of Regional Marketing Managers and Cafe Sales & Marketing Managers. Develop and maintain positive relationships within the business and social community. High-energy individual with effective and influential digital media skills. Knowledge of creative, public relations and e-commerce environment. Must possess strong communication and listening skills, excellent speaking, reading and writing. Ability to effectively pitch and present information in one-on-one or group situations. Fluency in English is required. Passion for music, food, culture, and creating unforgettable guest experiences.

Key Attributes

• Strategic yet operational: able to design the "big idea" and roll up sleeves to ensure it works in the field.
• Data-driven: uses insights, KPIs, and ROI metrics to make decisions.
• Collaborative leader: builds trust and alignment across functions and geographies.
• Creative innovator: pushes boundaries with fresh activations that stay true to Hard Rock's DNA.
• Global mindset with local sensitivity understands how to adapt global programs to regional needs.

Additional Details:

• Duties and responsibilities are typically performed in a professional office setting.
• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to stand; walk; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms, talk or hear; and taste or smell. The employee must frequently lift and/or move up to 50 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close, distance, color, and peripheral vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus.

The Tribal Council gives preference in all its employment practices to Native Americans. First preference in hiring, training, promoting and in all other aspects of employment is given to members of the Seminole Tribe who meet the job requirements. Second preference is given to other members of federally recognized Native American Tribes who meet the job requirements.

Hard Rock International is an equal opportunity employer. We live our motto LOVE ALL – SERVE ALL, and strive to foster an inclusive workplace culture for every team member. Hard Rock welcomes and encourages applications from people with disabilities. Consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), it is the policy of Hard Rock to provide reasonable accommodation when requested by a qualified applicant or employee with a disability, unless such accommodation would cause an undue hardship. The policy regarding requests for reasonable accommodation applies to all aspects of employment, including the application process. If reasonable accommodation is needed, please contact a member of our Human Resources team.

While this is intended to be an accurate reflection of the current job, management reserves the right to revise the current job or to require that other or different tasks be performed when circumstances change, (e.g. emergencies, changes in personnel, workload, rush jobs or technical developments).