F&B Director in London

About Aethos

Aethos is an experiential, design led hospitality group creating places where people come not simply to stay, but to connect, discover and belong.

At Aethos London, hospitality goes beyond the traditional hotel model. We bring together bedrooms, destination food and beverage, membership and community to create experiences that feel relevant to the neighbourhood and the people within it.

Food & Beverage is a significant part of that ambition. We don't want to create restaurants and bars that are successful simply because they sit within a hotel. We want to create places with their own identity, energy and following places people actively choose to visit, return to and recommend.

We are ambitious about what we are building, and we are looking for an equally ambitious Food & Beverage Director to lead its next chapter.

The Role

We are looking for an exceptional Food & Beverage Director, someone who combines the depth and rigour of five star hotel F&B leadership with significant experience of sophisticated, high volume restaurant businesses and a genuinely entrepreneurial approach to hospitality.

This is a senior leadership role with responsibility for the entire Food & Beverage business at Aethos London: its strategy, commercial performance, concepts, guest experience, leadership capability and culture.

As a member of the Executive Committee, you will also play an important role in the wider direction, culture and commercial success of Aethos London.

Core Responsibilities

F&B Strategy, Performance & Growth

• Set and lead the strategic direction for Food & Beverage across Aethos London, translating our ambition into clear commercial, operational and people priorities.
• Take full ownership of F&B revenues, profitability and overall business performance.
• Continually assess where the business can grow, identifying new revenue opportunities, partnerships, experiences and ways to strengthen existing concepts.
• Bring an entrepreneurial approach to decision making, challenging established thinking and asking what we could do differently or better.
• Use performance data, customer insight and market intelligence to inform decisions, while maintaining a strong instinct for hospitality and what makes a concept compelling.

Concepts, Experience & Relevance

• Build destination-led F&B experiences capable of attracting their own audiences beyond the hotel guest.
• Maintain a deep understanding of London's restaurant, bar and hospitality landscape, what is succeeding, what is changing and where the opportunities are.
• Work closely with the Executive Chef to ensure food, beverage, service and experience come together as one compelling proposition.
• Partner with Marketing, Membership and Community to build awareness, create demand and develop collaborations and experiences that give people new reasons to visit.

Leadership, People & Culture

• Build and lead an exceptional F&B leadership team capable of delivering both today's business and tomorrow's ambition.
• Develop commercially capable leaders who understand not only service and operations, but the performance of the businesses they lead.
• Partner closely with People & Culture on talent, engagement, leadership development, succession and organisational capability.
• Understand that the culture experienced by our people ultimately becomes the hospitality experienced by our guests.

Operational Excellence & Guest Experience

• Set the standards for exceptional F&B delivery across Aethos London and ensure they are consistently brought to life through strong leadership.
• Remain meaningfully connected to the guest experience and the realities of the operation, ensuring decisions made at leadership level translate into better experiences.
• Use guest insight, feedback and operational performance to continually raise standards.
• Ensure seamless collaboration across F&B, Culinary and the wider hotel.
• Create an environment where teams are empowered to make good decisions and where exceptional hospitality feels instinctive rather than scripted.

Executive Leadership

• Be an active and influential member of the Aethos London Executive Committee, contributing to the performance and direction of the wider business.
• Bring a commercial and hospitality perspective to strategic discussions beyond the boundaries of F&B.
• Act as a trusted partner to the General Manager, bringing insight, ideas, challenge and solutions.
• Build strong partnerships across Finance, Marketing, Membership, Sales, People & Culture and Operations.

What We're Looking For

We are looking for someone with a particular combination of experience.

You will already have held senior Food & Beverage leadership responsibility within a five-star luxury or lifestyle hotel environment and understand the complexity, standards and commercial disciplines that come with it.

Alongside this, you will have meaningful experience within high-volume, destination-led restaurant or hospitality businesses where success depends on building demand, remaining relevant and competing for the customer's attention.

We want someone who thinks about businesses, brands, customers and growth , not simply departments and outlets.

You’ll bring:

• A strong track record at F&B Director or equivalent senior leadership level within five-star luxury or lifestyle hospitality.
• Significant commercial and P&L responsibility across complex, high-volume F&B businesses.
• Evidence of growing revenue, improving profitability and strengthening the performance of F&B concepts.
• A sophisticated understanding of restaurant positioning, customer behaviour and what creates demand.
• Strong knowledge of London's restaurant and hospitality landscape.
• The ability to move confidently between strategy, commercial performance, concept development, people leadership and operational execution.
• The judgement, confidence and credibility to challenge thinking and influence at senior level.

The Person

You are entrepreneurial. You naturally see possibility and are energised by building, evolving and improving businesses.

You're commercially ambitious. You care about the numbers because they tell you whether the customer proposition is working, and because sustainable profitability gives great hospitality businesses the ability to keep getting better.

You're curious. You pay attention to what's happening in hospitality, culture and the wider world because relevance doesn't happen by accident.

You're a builder of people. You know that your greatest impact as a Director comes through the quality of the leaders you create around you.

You have high standards and clear expectations, but little interest in hierarchy or ego.

You are comfortable with complexity and equally comfortable making decisions.

You understand brand, but you also understand business.

And you're excited by the idea of joining something that is still being shaped rather than already finished.

Why Join Us

Aethos London is still being shaped, and that is exactly what makes this opportunity exciting.

You won't be inheriting a rigid F&B formula or an established way of doing things simply because “that's how it's always been done.”

You'll have the opportunity to shape our F&B strategy, strengthen and evolve our concepts, build the leadership team around you and materially influence the commercial success of the business.

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