F&B Commercial Manager in Newcastle upon Tyne

What makes the perfect pub? It’s great ales, delicious food, a welcoming atmosphere, and the warm welcome from a team that’s at the heart of everything we do. The Inn Collection Group is a multi-award‑winning pubs with rooms company, proudly located in some of the most outstanding destinations across the North of England and Wales. At ICG, we deliver exceptional hospitality by living and breathing our core values of respect, customer focused, warmth, and honesty, all with the goal of Making People Happy.

How we say thank you!

• Celebrate your birthday with an extra paid holiday.
• Build your future with support from our Lead‑Inn development program.
• Take the time you need to rest and recharge; Paid Breaks are on us.
• Enjoy 50% off food at any of our Inns.
• Relax with a stay at any of our Inns during January, February, and March for just £1.
• Take advantage of the chance to explore our beautiful locations, with 1/3 off room bookings all year round.
• Experience a spontaneous trip away with £50 on same day bookings.
• Your loved ones can enjoy 15% off bed and breakfast too!
• 24/7 confidential support is always there when you need it with our Employee Assistance Programme.
• Contribute to a company that gives back through our Give‑inn back scheme.

Join an award‑winning team recognised as the Best Pub Employer at the Publican Awards. Rooted in the North, our support hub at Quorum Business Park in Newcastle serves as a central space where all our departments come together to collaborate and innovate. Located in a thriving business community, it reflects our strong connection to the region while providing a modern, dynamic environment to drive our collective success.

You’ll Fit Right Inn

We are a pubs with rooms business operating with 30+ properties ranging from 10 to 100 bedrooms, grouped into three core regions. We are seeking a Commercial Manager, who has a passion for Food and Beverage, and the drive and skill set to be central to a great F&B offer and commercial performance for F&B across our business. In a competitive marketplace ICG wants to standout for quality, perceived value and consistency, enabled through heartfelt hospitality and a talented hardworking team that bring to life every day the products, positioning and promotions our commercial plan requires and our guests enjoy.

Our focus is on centralised scale and localised personality, which takes teamwork across our business teams, with this exciting new role being the conduit and coordinator across functions to bring the F&B vision to life. The successful candidate must have the ability to contribute and drive forward the F&B strategy across the business, leading with support and input from all stakeholders across the business, in line with our business goals and objectives as we look to grow our site estate across the UK.

They will genuinely start with the customer first, be constantly abreast of latest trends and customer preferences for the ICG cohorts and others, keep in touch with the operational requirements of the sites both from a supplier relationship side and an operational excellence side. They will work closely with marketing teams to deliver exciting ranges and menus, optimizing product mix, driving revenue through insight‑led placement and promotion, relevant promotional campaigns and F&B messaging, focus areas and GP winners, while protecting speed of service, quality of food and consistency of execution across our estate delivering freshly prepared food to our guests 365 days a year.

The role will require navigating both the tactical and strategic decisions, partnering very closely with business stakeholders and key suppliers.

Key Requirements

• Exceptional communicator, with an ability to engage at every level of the organisation, driving clarity of message and cohesion.
• Results focussed, commercial acumen, pragmatic approach and ability to adapt to requirements of the business and the constantly moving environment in which the business operates.
• Continuous improvement mindset, able to drive positive change and improvement cross functionally and in your domain.
• Ability to independently analyse data sets, mathematical, comfortable using and manipulating data in MS Excel and Power BI, strong proficiency in F&B management software e.g. Zonal, Procure Wizard.
• Experience of driving revenue performance and margin delivery through product selection and presentation, menu engineering and positioning, as well as price and promotion.
• Passion for working hard in a fast‑paced environment, with accountability and ownership, delivering results both individually and collectively.
• 5 years + experience in working in hospitality across Food and / or Beverage areas, leading commercial decisions and making recommendations using data and analysis to help drive clarity and return on investment.
• Ability to travel across estate and competitor landscape as required, stay in touch with sector news and trends and be innovative across supplier base and understanding guest experience and requirement drivers.
• Degree educated desirable but not essential.

Key Responsibilities

Customer Experience

• Analyse and understand customer research to deliver on brand customer journey in sites, relevant to site segmentation, cohesive across all channels for both residential and non‑residential customers, strategic goals and customer groupings.
• Lead menu process across F&B by site and season, in partnership with central operations team.
• Leverage customer feedback to continually analyse, understand and evolve our commercial offer, communication, execution and approach to maximise probability of repeat visits and life time customer value through F&B.
• Continually identify opportunities to drive revenue and contribution, help regional teams and GMs to develop and implement alongside wider commercial teams.
• Create and champion an environment and culture that is customer centric and focused on continuously understanding, evaluating and improving the experience we give to our customers.
• Customer targeted innovation around key events/products/promotions, delighting our customer and driving footfall and incremental revenue into the business.
• Clear planning, cross functional communication and ownership to deliver F&B commercial proposition, with daily / weekly / monthly plans in place well in advance of seasons to free up capacity for tactical promotions and adaptations to realise short term commercial wins.
• Partner with marketing and Ops, develop and execute a 12‑month promotional roadmap (seasonal events, tactical beverage activations, and room‑package add‑ons).
• Oversee the visual execution of the F&B offer, ensuring product placement at the "moment of choice" maximises spend per head.
• With commercial leadership and business leadership teams, ensure alignment and engagement with commercial plans, associated KPIs and success measures are agreed and delivered.
• Regular accurate forecasting and planning to positively influence future performance and inform operational decisions.
• Monitor competitor activity and market trends to inform and course correct as required to maximise performance and future direction.

Measures: CSAT / NPS by segment, Customer complaint levels and compensation volumes, mystery guest reviews, online reviews, new product launch success rate, F&B KPI and KVI metrics, F&B channel contribution, repeat custom %, LTV, promotional performance, volume and value growth metrics.

Operational Excellence

• Lead supplier negotiations and management of ongoing relationships.
• Adhere to Company guidelines and procedures at all times.
• Responsible for correct allergen data and process to ensure always publicly available and accurate.
• Build supplier relationships and coordinate and utilise to maximise financial return of supplier support across all relevant investment pools, including promo support, product awareness and any other area of opportunity.
• Drive GP% and cash optimisation through pricing, product mix and sourcing Supplier rebate and contract reviews and tender processes using data and transparency to ensure ICG leverages fully their commercial scale and economic benefit.

Measures: GP% and cash, allergen compliance audits, mystery shopper results.

Financial Strength

• Efficient and independent use of data and KPIs to continuously evaluate, analyse, course correct and action plan, identifying trends and opportunities.
• Feed into the regular forecasting cycle F&B volume, value and other metric data sets with understanding, modelling and commentary, risk and opportunities, stretch goals and promo vs non‑promo activity and spend.
• Central role in the delivery of year‑on‑year profitability growth of F&B channel, with growing Like for Likes.
• Central to delivery of stretching but achievable budgets partnering with Finance and Operations.
• Proactively engage with key suppliers, owning the relationship and ensuring the business get what they require from it whilst keeping abreast of trends and innovation in the wider marketplace.
• Drive upsell focus areas, to maximise impact and benefit to both guest and business.

Measures: Upsell metrics, F&B Revenue and margin metrics, Promotional spend returns, Meal/Drinks sold, Basket size etc, cash generation.

United Team

• Be a positive, collaborative member of our team, connecting site to centre and vice versa, and build and reinforce cross functional relationships.
• Set by example displaying ICG core values of Warmth, Customer Obsessed, Accountable, Inn it Together and Deliver Results.
• Uphold industry‑leading processes and standards, embrace change and technology appropriately and ensure ICG are set up for scale in the F&B domain.
• Actively share knowledge, build capability in others and drive awareness and skill depth in the F&B commercial space across peers, sites and colleagues of all levels.

Measures: Mystery shopper or equivalent reports, financial and non‑financial KPIs.