Director of Food & Beverage

Hotels done differently. It is not a tagline; it is how we operate. We believe in the power of People, Place, and Character, building properties where individuals are valued and celebrated as a tribute to the neighborhoods we call home.

Surety Hotel occupies the landmark Hippee Building in the heart of downtown Des Moines, a 1913 Beaux-Arts tower restored into an independent hotel with rooms, event spaces, and Mulberry Street Tavern, its ground-floor restaurant and bar, at the center of the city's dining scene.

Surety is managed by Aparium Hotel Group, founded in 2011 by Chicago hospitality entrepreneur Mario Tricoci on a simple conviction: that c-suite service belongs in distinct, underserved cities, and that the unadulterated character of each place is the point. Aparium has since grown into a different kind of hotel company, one that ventures off the beaten path and pairs the acumen of large operators with the soul of an independent.

Food & Beverage is the heartbeat of Surety Hotel. Mulberry Street Tavern anchors the ground floor as one of the most ambitious dining rooms in the market, open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and holding a familiar, but elevated standard across every daypart. In the lobby of the hotel sits Sixth & Mulberry, a daytime coffee bar, and evening cocktail lounge.

Around the main floor outlets sits a full banquet and catering operation spanning the hotel's event spaces, from corporate meetings and social celebrations to weddings and the experiences that make a hotel of this character sing. Every one of these revenue centers is yours.

The Director of Food & Beverage is the singular leader of all food and beverage at Surety Hotel.

You report directly to the Hotel General Manager and own every F&B and banquet & catering operation end to end: the restaurant, the bar, banquets and events, catering, and in-room dining. The vision, the standards, the numbers, and the teams are yours.

You set the strategy, build the leaders, and hold the entire operation to a single elevated standard, whether it is a Tuesday breakfast, a 200-cover Saturday night, or a full-hotel wedding weekend running on top of both.

Every Aparium leader is expected to get their hands dirty: to find what needs fixing and fix it. You will spend your time present in service where it matters most, while building the financials, tools, and systems that let a successful hotel F&B operation perform at the top of the game.

You have led complete hotel F&B operations, restaurant, bar, and banquet, and you understand there is an art and a science to this work that no manual fully captures. You are energized by a building running at full tilt: a packed dining room downstairs, a plated dinner for 150 upstairs, and a clean handoff between the two. When the night turns, you step in, and your teams respect you for it.

Guests, clients, and industry peers seek you out; you are the person they call for a table, a wedding date, or a board dinner, and the one who makes them and their people feel known. You hold a clear picture of how a top operation runs and how every lever connects to it: staffing, scheduling, training, ordering, BEOs, banquet execution, sidework, shift logs, pre-shifts, and the systems behind them.

You carry serious beverage depth, real command of a P&L and a forecast, and you sweat the details that separate good service from exceptional service.

• Own all of F&B. Develop and execute the operating plan that delivers every outlet and event space, restaurant, bar, banquets, catering, and in-room dining, at a consistent elevated standard, every daypart, every day.
• Own the P&L, the budget, and the forecast. Build the annual F&B operating budget, deliver accurate monthly forecasts, set goals and KPIs by revenue center, lead inventory and cost controls, and manage labor and expense to deliver the financial result the operation is built to produce.
• Own banquets and catering performance. Lead/delegate banquet operations from BEO to breakdown, hold execution to the same standard as the dining room, and partner with the Sales team on menu architecture, pricing, and packages that maximize catering revenue and protect margin.
• Build and lead the leadership team. Hire, develop, and hold accountable the outlet and banquet leaders beneath you, building the bench strength and succession pipeline a growing operation…