Head of Commercial - Bars & Casual Dining

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About the Role

Head of Bars & Casual Dining - Camden, London A key focus of this role is to support the delivery of like for like sales by driving passenger penetration and spend in units, whilst ensuring our value offer delivers profitable cash margin growth in line with budgetary expectations. The role holder will be expected to use a variety of levers to drive like-for-like sales growth, such as range improvement, optimisation of price and promotion, improved menu design and upselling. They will take key customer, market trend and competitor insights to build a commercially viable plan of activity to deliver a step change in performance. This role requires strong commercial and category management acumen, the ability to build strong cross functional relationships is key. Success in the role is highly dependent on an effective relationship with the operational teams so that the commercial initiatives are designed and delivered with a good understanding of operational processes including supply chain, procurement as well as ensuring great quality is delivered smoothly and efficiently at point of purchase. The role will include regular presentations to the UK Exec. and other key stakeholders. The Head of category will need to manage internal & external stakeholders in order to ensure that SSP achieves its commercial outcomes whilst satisfying the requirements of the clients that we work with. Main Duties Strategic Planning: Develop and execute the commercial plans for the pub, bars, and casual dining category. Value creation Plan- create and deliver key initiatives to grow the category ahead of passenger growth. Menu Development: Collaborate with the NPD team to design and update brand menus that deliver the proposition to our customer base, offering value to our customers, commercial growth to SSP and our client base, aligned to key market trends. Marketing and Promotion: Develop Calendar of events and activities across the category to attract customers, increase footfall, and enhance SSP’s position with clients whilst driving participation and profitable LFL sales. Cross functional relationships: Manage relationships with supply chain, purchasing and operations to deliver range and menu revisions. source quality products at competitive prices. Financial Reporting: Analytics & Review– define the measures to track the performance of initiatives. Ensure that every initiative is modelled on a product by product / unit by unit basis and forecast outcomes. Cash Margin Maximisation: Identify opportunities in the categories to drive revenue, spend per passenger alongside improving the value proposition to our customer base with recipe cost reduction proposals. Deliver proposals for commercial Sign off to weekly trade / monthly commercial forum meetings for approval (background, financial value and suggested next steps) Support the category team to deliver marketing briefs to access marketing services – to drive the NPD process and creative design process for all supporting POS and digital collateral, articulating identified opportunities to generate improved sales or margin, specifying desired outcomes and proposing strategies for development Monitor competitor and brand partner activity Manage and develop the Category commercial team to deliver the commercial plan. This role requires strong leadership, business acumen, and a deep understanding of the hospitality industry. The Head of Pub, Bars, and Casual Dining plays a pivotal role in driving the success of these establishments within the travel environment, this is a key growth category for SSP. Knowledge, skills and experience required Experience of using price, range, display and space, upselling, margin and category optimisation to deliver commercial results Experience of successfully delivering commercial plans, ideally in the food-to-go/ hospitality sector Ability to drive decision-making through analysis and based on evidence, rather than intuition Experience of drawing out business insights from analysis and presenting findings and recommendations persuasively Must be able to develop innovative ideas to drive top and bottom line, testing, learning and refining and then operationalising them Experience in managing and influencing senior stakeholders Experience in managing client relationships Excellent knowledge of external trends in the food and beverage and/or grocery industry (depending on brands allocated) Good understanding of the impact of external factors on growth, including competition and seasonality Good understanding of the operational reality in units i.e. a good understanding of waste management and minimisation, labour planning and optimisation, equipment, space and layout etc. Desirable skills / personal attributes Analytical and commercial Exceptional attention to detail Data-driven Ability to focus effort on the most profitable outcome Innovative and bold – able to find new ways of doing things, challenge the status quo, take an entrepreneurial approach (measured risk, high reward) Ability to build and work to a solid plan to achieve margin but not afraid to adapt to changes to take advantage of opportunities and quick wins as they arise Working at pace SSP are proud to be an equal opportunity employer who seek to recruit and retain the most talented individuals from a variety of backgrounds, skills and perspectives.

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