Senior F&B Operations Lead for Large Corporate Events

American Express Global Business Travel; Providence (RI); On-site; USD 55,000 - 103,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible benefits

Travel perks

Learning & development

Inclusion programs

Job summary

American Express Global Business Travel is seeking an experienced Hospitality Operations Specialist to own the food and beverage strategy for large corporate meetings and events on a dedicated account. You will manage menus, budgets, and vendor relations from RFP through final reconciliation.

The role requires strong negotiation, impeccable attention to detail, and the ability to coordinate with venues, catering teams, and internal stakeholders to deliver seamless experiences.

Qualifications

• Five or more years managing food and beverage for large corporate meetings and events.
• Fluency with banquet event orders, guarantees, attrition clauses, service charges, and how catering contracts actually bill.
• Track record owning a food and beverage budget line and reconciling it at program close.
• Comfort negotiating directly with venue catering and convention services teams, and with reading and marking up the hospitality terms of a venue contract.
• Experience contributing to venue or supplier sourcing, RFP responses, or proposal cost models, including the ability to build a defensible per person estimate before a menu exists.
• Fluency in how a general session and the functions around it actually get built: room sets and turns, show flow, load in and strike schedules, power and rigging orders, and the labor and union rules that govern all of it.

Responsibilities

• Own the food and beverage plan for every assigned program on the dedicated account, with menus and beverage strategy aligned to program objectives, audience profile, and approved budget, and present recommendations to client stakeholders in terms of program outcomes rather than cost alone.
• Serve as primary point of contact for hotel and venue catering teams, convention services, and outside caterers. Author, review, and approve banquet event orders, then hold venues to what was agreed.
• Manage dietary, allergen, and accessibility requirements across every function, from intake through onsite verification.
• Track guarantees, attrition, and consumption against contracted minimums, and surface financial exposure before it becomes a charge.
• Negotiate food and beverage minimums, service charge and gratuity terms, corkage, and labor fees. Lead the food and beverage budget line, validate banquet checks and invoices against contracted terms, and reconcile at program close.
• Lead onsite food and beverage execution across general sessions, breakouts, receptions, and hospitality functions, including tastings, site walks, and daily catering touchpoints, with the travel, occasional weekends, and extended days that program weeks require.
• Support venue and supplier sourcing for studio programs from RFP through contract handoff, owning the catering, hospitality, and food and beverage terms inside those contracts.
• Contribute food and beverage content, hospitality concepts, and cost modeling to new business proposals in partnership with the Global Event Proposal Team.
• Lead operations projects sponsored by the Head of Event Operations, from brief through delivery, including program delivery support during peak windows.
• Build and maintain food and beverage standards, supplier intelligence, and reference materials the team reuses across programs and proposals, and keep food and beverage milestones aligned with Meeting Coordinators, Meeting Managers, and Team Leads.

Skills

Food & beverage management

Budget management

Vendor coordination

Negotiation with venues

Client communication

Event operations

Education

CMP

CPCE

Job description

American Express Global Business Travel is seeking an experienced Hospitality Operations Specialist to own the food and beverage strategy for large corporate meetings and events on a dedicated account. You will manage menus, budgets, and vendor relations from RFP through final reconciliation.

The role requires strong negotiation, impeccable attention to detail, and the ability to coordinate with venues, catering teams, and internal stakeholders to deliver seamless experiences.