Director of Beverage: Elevate NYC Hospitality

Time To Hire; New York (NY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

IAM Hospitality seeks a Director of Beverage for its New York operations. This role blends strategic beverage vision with financial discipline to elevate guest experience, brand identity, revenue, and profitability across multiple concepts.

You will design programs across cocktails, wine, spirits, beer, and non-alcoholic beverages; lead openings; manage cost controls; train bartenders and managers; and build strong supplier partnerships while upholding quality standards.

Qualifications

• 8–10+ years of progressive hospitality experience with leadership in beverage operations.
• Proven experience as a Beverage Director, Corporate Beverage Director, Multi-Unit Beverage Director, Bar Director, or equivalent senior beverage leadership position.
• Strong background in fine dining, upscale restaurants, luxury hospitality, or high-volume premium concepts, ideally within the New York market.
• Demonstrated experience managing sophisticated beverage programs and multiple concepts or locations.
• Strong understanding of financial performance, including beverage P&L, purchasing, inventory management, cost controls, pricing and profitability.
• Experience supporting or leading new restaurant openings is strongly preferred.
• Strong supplier and distributor relationship-management experience.

Responsibilities

• Develop and lead the overall beverage strategy for IAM's New York concepts.
• Create and evolve programs across cocktails, wine, spirits, beer, non-alcoholic beverages, and specialty beverage experiences.
• Design beverage menus aligned with each concept’s culinary direction, brand identity, target guest, and commercial objectives.
• Partner closely with Executive Chefs, General Managers, and Operations leaders to ensure seamless integration between food, beverage, service, and the overall guest experience.
• Establish recipes, technical specifications, presentation standards, glassware, mise en place, and service rituals.
• Develop and oversee SOPs, operating standards, and beverage controls across all locations.
• Lead the beverage component of new restaurant openings, including program development, equipment, supplier selection, opening inventory, training, implementation, and operational stabilization.
• Manage and continuously analyze beverage cost, COGS, gross margin, pricing, sales mix, inventory variance, waste, and productivity.
• Use menu engineering, upselling, premiumization, and beverage experiences to increase revenue and profitability.
• Establish effective systems for purchasing, inventory, requisitions, transfers, product controls, and loss prevention.
• Build and manage strategic relationships with distributors, wineries, distilleries, producers, and beverage brands.
• Negotiate commercial agreements while protecting the identity, quality standards, and financial interests of IAM Hospitality.
• Develop structured training programs for bartenders, sommeliers, servers, captains, managers, and other guest-facing teams.
• Identify and develop beverage talent, creating a strong internal leadership pipeline.
• Conduct regular operational audits to ensure consistency in product quality, execution, service, cost control, cleanliness, and presentation.
• Monitor New York and global hospitality trends to keep IAM Hospitality’s beverage programs relevant and competitive.
• Partner with Operations, Finance, and Legal to maintain compliance with applicable New York beverage and alcohol regulations.
• Support special events, collaborations, activations, private dining experiences, and brand partnerships.

Skills

Leadership

Beverage program development

Financial acumen

Strategic thinking

Vendor negotiations

Job description

IAM Hospitality seeks a Director of Beverage for its New York operations. This role blends strategic beverage vision with financial discipline to elevate guest experience, brand identity, revenue, and profitability across multiple concepts.

You will design programs across cocktails, wine, spirits, beer, and non-alcoholic beverages; lead openings; manage cost controls; train bartenders and managers; and build strong supplier partnerships while upholding quality standards.