RHH202619

Chief Operating Officer

Food Service Management

THE COMPANY

Our client is a leading food service management company in the Midwest.

THE OPPORTUNITY

This role offers a unique opportunity to help shape the future of a high-performing, relationship-driven organization as it enters its next phase of growth. Our client is seeking an accomplished food service executive who can build a more scalable, disciplined enterprise while preserving the entrepreneurial culture, exceptional customer relationships, and service philosophy that have fueled the company’s success. The COO will be responsible for operational excellence, financial performance, customer retention, leadership development, and the consistent execution of the organization’s brand promise across all markets and locations. The successful leader will translate strategy into action by strengthening operational consistency, developing future leaders, implementing scalable systems and processes, and driving measurable business performance. Most importantly, the COO will raise the bar on accountability and operational execution without sacrificing the agility, personalized service, culinary quality, and trusted partnerships that continue to differentiate the organization in the marketplace.

This position reports to the CEO and has six direct reports.

JOB DEFINITION

The COO will put strategy into practice across the enterprise, establishing a unified operating model that aligns people, processes, and performance across all markets and ensures every location consistently delivers exceptional hospitality, culinary quality, financial performance, and customer satisfaction. The COO will serve as a key change leader, building organizational commitment to new ways of working and ensuring that operational improvements are effectively implemented, adopted, and sustained across the enterprise. Leveraging data, technology, and operational discipline, the COO will improve productivity, labor and food cost management, compliance, forecasting, and overall business performance while mentoring and empowering field leaders to make decisions that best serve their customers. As a strategic partner to the CEO, the COO will also lead the successful integration of new business, strengthen operational scalability, and position the organization for sustainable, profitable growth.

SKILLS

The COO will be an enterprise-minded, field-oriented leader who builds trusted relationships through visibility, transparency, and follow-through, and establishes a culture of accountability while balancing operational discipline with the flexibility to meet the unique needs of each market, account, and community. A collaborative, low-ego leader who is committed to developing people, leading thoughtful change, and making sound decisions that strengthen operational performance, leadership capability, and long-term organizational growth.

  • Partner with the CEO and executive leadership team to turn enterprise strategy into operational results, aligning people, processes, and performance to support sustainable, profitable growth.
  • Leads with self-awareness and emotional intelligence, building trusted relationships and influencing through curiosity, thoughtful questions, active listening, and a deep understanding of the business and its people before developing solutions.
  • Lead all multi-site operations, ensuring consistent, high-quality customer and guest experience; Combine strategic foresight with hands-on execution, anticipating what the business needs next while translating strategy into disciplined, practical action.
  • Build a scalable operating model that strengthens accountability, standardizes best practices, and preserves the organization’s entrepreneurial culture and relationship-driven approach.
  • Build business acumen across the operations leadership team, teaching strong business fundamentals and developing leaders who understand how their decisions impact financial performance, clients, people, and the broader enterprise.
  • Drive operational and financial performance through sound management of P&L, labor, food cost, productivity, forecasting, profitability, and enterprise-wide performance metrics.
  • Champion trusted customer partnerships by protecting industry-leading retention, strengthening executive-level relationships, proactively resolving issues, and creating systems that continuously improve customer satisfaction.
  • Partner with culinary, procurement, and supply chain leadership to consistently deliver outstanding food quality, hospitality, efficiency, and regulatory compliance while maintaining financial discipline.
  • Partner with commercial leadership to evaluate growth opportunities and lead the operational evaluation, mobilization, and integration of new business, ensuring every new account is launched seamlessly and achieves stable performance quickly.
  • Leverage technology, data, and enterprise performance metrics to improve decision-making, optimize scheduling, inventory, forecasting, reporting, and operational execution while driving continuous improvement across the organization.
  • Ensure rigorous compliance with food safety, sanitation, workplace safety, labor regulations, licensing, and contractual requirements.
  • Foster a culture of integrity, accountability, excellence, training, and continuous improvement that inspires teams, strengthens customer relationships, and supports the organization’s long-term vision.
  • Build, mentor, and develop a high-performing operations organization and leadership team by strengthening organizational structure, capability, succession planning, cross-functional collaboration, and leadership development while ensuring the right leaders are in the right roles.

BACKGROUND EXPERIENCE

  • 20+ years of progressive leadership experience, including significant responsibility for multi-unit, multi-market operations in contract food service, hospitality, dining services, or a closely related service business.
  • Demonstrated success leading a complex operating organization through growth, standardization, transformation, or geographic expansion.
  • Full P&L accountability experience with a strong command of budgeting, forecasting, labor management, food cost, productivity, margin improvement, and capital planning.
  • Deep understanding of customer retention, account management, service recovery, and executive-level relationship management in a contract-based business.
  • Experience with culinary operations, procurement and supply chain, food safety, sanitation, allergen controls, regulatory compliance, and workplace safety.
  • Proven ability to establish operating systems, KPIs, dashboards, SOPs, and performance review processes across distributed locations.
  • Proven ability to lead enterprise-wide operational excellence and change initiatives, e.g., continuous improvement, process standardization, or similar disciplines – with demonstrated, sustainable improvements in efficiency, consistency, quality, and financial performance.
  • Experience opening, mobilizing, integrating, or turning around multiple customer accounts or operating sites.
  • Success implementing or optimizing food service technologies, including POS, mobile ordering, menu management, inventory, scheduling, ERP, and business intelligence platforms.
  • Strong leadership, communication, talent development, and change management capabilities.
  • Experience in K–12, higher education, corporate dining, or other public/private institutional food service environments is strongly preferred.
  • Willingness and ability to travel regularly to locations and customer sites.
  • A leader with humility, resilience, curiosity, and an appropriate sense of humor.

 

Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in business, hospitality, food service management, operations, or a related field required; advanced degree or relevant professional certifications preferred.
If you have these qualifications and are looking for a challenging career, please submit your Resume using the button below.
Eric Hohauser
Lead Consultant
Kate Scott
Director, Executive Recruitment
SUBMIT RESUME