Hospitality Operations Specialist

United States

Full time

J-84109

Amex GBT is a place where colleagues find inspiration in travel as a force for good and - through their work - can make an impact on our industry. We’re here to help our colleagues achieve success and offer an inclusive and collaborative culture where your voice is valued.

Food and beverage is where event programs are most often judged and most often overspent. This role puts a single owner on it. The Hospitality Operations Specialist owns food and beverage strategy and delivery on a dedicated account, from menu and beverage concept through banquet event orders, onsite execution, and final reconciliation. Because that ownership sits closest to venues, catering teams, and contract terms, the role also supports The Experience Studio's event operations team on sourcing, proposals, and program delivery across the portfolio.

• Own the food and beverage plan for every assigned program on the dedicated account, with menus and beverage strategy aligned to program objectives, audience profile, and approved budget, and present recommendations to client stakeholders in terms of program outcomes rather than cost alone.

• Serve as primary point of contact for hotel and venue catering teams, convention services, and outside caterers. Author, review, and approve banquet event orders, then hold venues to what was agreed.

• Manage dietary, allergen, and accessibility requirements across every function, from intake through onsite verification.

• Track guarantees, attrition, and consumption against contracted minimums, and surface financial exposure before it becomes a charge.

• Negotiate food and beverage minimums, service charge and gratuity terms, corkage, and labor fees. Lead the food and beverage budget line, validate banquet checks and invoices against contracted terms, and reconcile at program close.

• Lead onsite food and beverage execution across general sessions, breakouts, receptions, and hospitality functions, including tastings, site walks, and daily catering touchpoints, with the travel, occasional weekends, and extended days that program weeks require.

• Support venue and supplier sourcing for studio programs from RFP through contract handoff, owning the catering, hospitality, and food and beverage terms inside those contracts.

• Contribute food and beverage content, hospitality concepts, and cost modeling to new business proposals in partnership with the Global Event Proposal Team.

• Lead operations projects sponsored by the Head of Event Operations, from brief through delivery, including program delivery support during peak windows.

• Build and maintain food and beverage standards, supplier intelligence, and reference materials the team reuses across programs and proposals, and keep food and beverage milestones aligned with Meeting Coordinators, Meeting Managers, and Team Leads.

• Five or more years managing food and beverage for large corporate meetings and events, on the agency side or in hotel and venue catering and convention services.

• Demonstrated fluency with banquet event orders, guarantees, attrition clauses, service charges, and how catering contracts actually bill.

• Track record owning a food and beverage budget line and reconciling it at program close.

• Comfort negotiating directly with venue catering and convention services teams, and with reading and marking up the hospitality terms of a venue contract.

• Experience contributing to venue or supplier sourcing, RFP responses, or proposal cost models, including the ability to build a defensible per person estimate before a menu exists.

• Fluency in how a general session and the functions around it actually get built: room sets and turns, show flow, load in and strike schedules, power and rigging orders,…