Director of Restaurant Operations

Buddy's Pizza•Farmington Hills, MI

7d•Onsite

About The Position

Buddy's Pizza invented Detroit-style pizza in 1946. Our 14 full-service restaurants are where the brand lives — and we are a legacy brand in an operating turnaround, with a mandate to restore four-wall profitability and guest experience before we grow. The Director of Operations owns the performance of those 14 restaurants and roughly 892 team members. You lead the two Area Coaches who run the east and west territories and the Operations & Loss Prevention Manager who protects the business. The job has three parts, and all three are real: Run the business. Sales, four-wall profit, guest experience, and standards across 14 full-service restaurants — dining room, bar, kitchen, and catering. Rebuild how we deploy labor. Our labor model exists, and it is not yet right. Making it right is a named deliverable of this role, not a background hope. Install the operating discipline underneath both — and hold it there after the enthusiasm wears off. This is a full-service job, and we mean it. Dining rooms, bars, servers, and table turns are the work, not a side note!

Requirements

Multi-unit leadership. 8+ years in multi-unit restaurant operations, including 3+ years leading multi-unit leaders — Area/District Managers, Area Coaches, or equivalent
Full-service depth. You have run dining rooms with a bar, servers, and table service at volume. A purely QSR or fast-casual background is not a fit for this seat
P&L ownership. A full-service portfolio with a track record of improving four-wall profitability, not just holding it
Developing people through other leaders. Managers you promoted, bench you built, successors who were ready
Performance-management mechanics. Written goals, documented coaching and recognition, and a consistent escalation path run with HR
Restaurant data fluency. POS reporting, labor forecasting, guest-feedback platforms, and BI dashboards
Compliance knowledge. Wage-and-hour and tipped-employee rules, food safety, and alcohol service regulation
In the restaurants. This is a field job with an office, not an office job with field visits — regular travel across metro Detroit, including nights and weekends
Education. Bachelor's degree, or equivalent operating experience

Responsibilities

Restaurant P&L. Sales and four-wall EBITDA across 14 restaurants. Comparable sales on our DOW-aligned methodology, food and labor to model, and a plan that closes the gap between our best and worst buildings.
The Area Coach team. Develop and hold accountable two coaches carrying seven restaurants each. Set their cadence, review their store visits, calibrate how they assess GMs, and make sure a standard means the same thing in both territories.
The labor model. Validate and rebuild the staffing matrix by position, section, and daypart. Drive forecast accuracy, deploy against the real demand curve, and hold schedules to model — with service scores holding. A labor model that saves money and breaks Friday night is a failed labor model.
Talent readiness. Every management seat filled and every key role carrying a named successor who knows they're it. Hiring runs against a plan, not against a resignation, and new managers are trained to a standard rather than handed off to shadow whoever's working.
Speed to execution. Every initiative has an owner and a date. Communication reaches the crew, not just the management group chat. You course-correct mid-week instead of discovering it at period end.
Performance that's never a surprise. Every leader knows where they stand. Underperformers have a documented coaching trail, top performers have a documented recognition trail, and goals are written, dated, and inspected. Your coaches diagnose before they coach — skill gap, will problem, or a barrier in the way are three different jobs.
A predictable weekly rhythm. Orders, counts, schedules, and one-on-ones land on the same day every week. Compliance work is never late. A restaurant can run a good week without its GM in the building because the week is designed, not improvised.
Guest experience. From the door to the check — wait management, ticket times, table turns, bar execution, and service recovery.
Loss prevention. Lead the Operations & Loss Prevention Manager on discounts, voids, comps, cash and bar handling, and inventory variance. Own the discount policy end to end.
Standards across formats. On a dotted line, own the brand and operating standard in the carry-out restaurants as well — one standard for what a Buddy's looks like, whoever runs the P&L.