About this role
About T&J Travel Centers
At T&J Travel Centers, we're redefining what a travel center can be: a place where guests experience genuine hospitality, not just convenience. We combine craveable food, spotless facilities, and friendly local service that feels like home.
We're a fast-growing, family-run company built on strong values and servant leadership. We're looking for a Director of Food & Hospitality who lives craveable food, leads humbly, stays hungry, and helps every kitchen deliver the same great meal every shift.
| MISSION OF THE ROLE Own the food: every item that comes out of any T&J kitchen, every guest's experience at Tarzan Grill, and a grab-and-go program built on deli offerings made fresh in-house every day. |
What you'll do
You'll be the leader of everything we cook and serve: responsible for food quality, speed, consistency across every kitchen, the grab-and-go program, and the Kitchen Managers who run it all day to day.
Your success will be measured by how well you:
● Hold every kitchen to the same standard for quality, portion and ticket time, and review the numbers weekly
● Write the spec for every menu item and build the brand book a new store can open from
● Own kitchen training: the curriculum, station certification, and follow-up to make sure it sticks
● Build and coach a bench of Kitchen Managers who are trained and ready to step up
● Launch and run the grab-and-go deli at every store, with fresh product in the case from open to close
● Protect the menu: new items earn their place on speed and quality, and come off if they slip
What you bring
● Five or more years in multi-unit food operations, at director or area manager level
● Experience running a kitchen that cooks from raw product
● Recipe, SOP and food cost systems you have built yourself
● A record of holding quality and speed standards across several stores at once
Nice to have
● Culinary degree or formal culinary education
● Experience as a head chef, including menu design at a busy fast casual
● Bilingual, English and Spanish. This would be a big advantage in this role
● Experience building teams
● A record of humble leadership
What you can expect
● A family-style culture built on respect, teamwork, and humility
● Real ownership: Craveable Food is one of our six core values, and you're accountable for it
● Competitive salary, performance bonuses, and recognition for excellence
● A hands-on job in kitchens: long stretches standing and walking, and lifting up to 50 pounds
OUR VALUES
Run Lean: Waste nothing. We live or die by pennies.
Care Deeply: Respect the guest in front of you and the teammate beside you.
Clean Relentlessly: If you see it, you own it. The restroom, the parking lot, the whole store.
Craveable Food: Make it worth driving across town for. Every single time.
Lead Humbly: Go first. No job is beneath us.
Stay Hungry: Good today isn't good enough tomorrow. Ask for the harder job.
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