Director of Operational Excellence at DYNE Hospitality Group – Little Rock, Arkansas

About DYNE Hospitality Group

Tropical Smoothie Cafe's largest franchisee is DYNE Hospitality Group. DYNE's mission is to create opportunities by leveraging our God-given gifts, believing that everyone excels at something. When we work in our area of gifting, we are energized, excited, and love what we do.

We measure our success at DYNE Hospitality Group by creating opportunities through continuous growth. Operational excellence is crucial for our success and ongoing development. We take this commitment seriously, value our team like family, provide resources for their growth, and prioritize our customers' experience. We offer competitive wages, benefits, and opportunities for long-term career growth.

Our Culture is much more than a page on a website or an inspirational poster on a wall. To us, our culture is who we truly are and what we love to do. We use it to make every decision in our company. We encourage our team to live by it and hold each other accountable to it. We base hiring, promotions, team member reviews, performance, and communication on it.

Our Culture consists of the 4 Core Values mentioned, and we use them every day. Walk into any of our cafes, and you will see them prominently displayed. We believe our culture is one of the traits that sets DYNE Hospitality Group apart from the rest.

• Invest In People
• Understand Why
• Make Smart Decisions
• Make It Happen

DYNE Hospitality Group offers competitive wages, benefits, and long-term career growth.

Job Location:

Arkansas or Oklahoma, relocation assistance available

Job Summary:

This position is responsible for ensuring the organization is operationally prepared to grow, stabilize, and perform through disciplined training, execution, and readiness planning. This role owns the strategy, standards, and deployment model for training execution while Field Trainers and Training Coordinators deliver hands-on execution in the field.

The Director serves as the single point of accountability for training readiness across new café openings, acquisitions, and performance recovery efforts-ensuring consistency, speed, and quality at scale.

Duties/Responsibilities:

New Restaurant Openings:

• Lead operational readiness and training execution for all new restaurant openings
• Lead and execute all New Restaurant Opening (NRO) training agendas and timelines
• Build and manage NRO training teams and deployment plans
• Partner with Operations and HR teams to ensure operational readiness
• Develop and continuously improve NRO playbooks, including pre-opening preparation, training deployment, opening week execution, and post-open stabilization, consistently opening across markets
• Evaluate NRO performance and identify opportunities for improvement, Training & Development
• Ensure training materials reflect operational standards, brand values, and guest experience expectations
• Implement tools and systems to measure training effectiveness and performance outcomes
• Design and implement a company-wide Trainer Certification Program
• Identify, certify, and develop Field Training Leads, Coordinators, and Trainers to support new café openings and acquisitions
• Develop a succession plan to fill the trainer bench for all states as they are promoted in the system, or to quickly cover turnover

Operational Excellence:

• Identify operational inefficiencies and implement solutions that improve consistency, productivity, and restaurant performance
• Partner with Operations leadership to strengthen systems that support multi-unit growth
• Support rollout of new initiatives, menu updates, technology deployments, and operational process changes across restaurants
• Act as a bridge between field operations and the support center to continuously improve systems and processes
• Support the rollout and execution of Tropical Smoothie Café corporate initiatives
• Continue to evaluate and improve the new café opening and acquisition process to ensure best-in-class operational standards

Normalization of Café Opening Financials:

• Implement and maintain a normalization program to stabilize operations for new locations and acquisitions, with a focus on team retention and café financial results
• Analyze café audit performance and deliver action plans back to District Managers and General Managers to improve operational excellence (real-time training/responses)
• Development of tools to support operations to improve operations
• Provide action plans and coach the field on how to execute training programs and to improve operational results

Qualifications:

• 5 – 7+ years of multi-unit restaurant leadership experience
• Proven experience leading field training, NROs, or multi-unit operational training in a fast-paced environment
• Ability to work independently; capable of operating in a fast-moving, ever-changing environment, and able to navigate through conflicting priorities.
• Excellent and influential interpersonal and communication skills (written, verbal, presentation, listening) across functions and levels of the organization.
• Strong leadership capabilities with a knack for influencing individuals and teams without direct authority.
• Deep knowledge and experience with food safety and hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) guidelines.
• Comfortable operating in a high-growth, ambiguous environment with the ability to make informed, time-sensitive decisions.
• High attention to detail with consistent delivery of accurate, high-quality work in a fast-moving environment.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree is valued, but not essential
• Working knowledge of the Microsoft suite
• Possession of a current and valid driver’s license and Real ID or Passport for flight travel
• Ability to travel (up to 60%) to support NROs and field operations
• Must be able to lift 50 pounds
• Must have open availability, including night and weekend availability
• ServSafe Certified (or willingness to obtain)