Job description

Dinner Lab is a membership-based dinner club that provides a platform for up-and-coming chefs to create their ideal menu for one evening. We have two dinners a week—each with a different chef, menu, and location. We remove the trappings of the traditional restaurant and strip back the dining experience to its most raw and essential form through three key ingredients:

• Great people
• Unique food
• Unconventional venues

We are all about connecting diners with local chefs, companies we admire, and places we love to create a community that shares the common bond of food and drink.Our organization is expanding quickly; we are actively searching for team members who will grow with us and continue to provide unique dining experiences for our guests.

Event Manager

Dinner Lab is looking for a Event Manager in St. Louis to plan and execute events. This person will work closely with the local Chef de Cuisine and Market Manager, as well as our corporate Membership Relations and Culinary teams to manage all event operations in the Dinner Lab St. Louis market.We want someone who is willing to throw themselves into the mix and get their hands dirty, to ensure each event is better than the previous. Multi-tasking is a MUST. There are a million moving parts which need to be juggled—with professionalism, excitement, and passion—in order to achieve the best results for our members, our staff, and our company. You’ll need to be quick-learning, quick on your feet, and an impeccable problem solver.Dinner Lab is a fast moving, ambitious start up, that requires hard work and dedication. We sell an experience that only happens once, and you need to be able to deal with an ever-changing catalog of chefs from all over the country, foodies who have an incredibly high bar for new experiences and cuisines, and a management team that is crazy about improving our guest experience every day.
Key Responsibilities
Event Operations

• Work closely with the corporate Culinary team to manage the St. Louis event calendar.
• Work closely with Market Manager to cultivate and maintain positive relationships with location owners/managers, including clear and open communication regarding our events.
• Hire, train, and manage a part-time staff of servers and bartenders.
• Manage all day-of event operations: rental equipment deliveries, efficient set-up and break-down of event space, task delegation to part-time staff, etc.

Service

• Make sure each guest receives a unique, memorable experience: efficient service, excellent food, and warm interactions with all Dinner Lab staff.
• Review and analyze each event’s feedback, and create action items for yourself and your staff to drive improvement.
• Work closely with Chef de Cuisine and Guest Chef to educate part-time staff and members about the menu and provide impeccable service to all guests (pacing, dietary restrictions, etc.)
• Manage a budget and make sure that you are hitting it.

Skills and Experience
Professional experience

• At least 2 years of event planning and execution, or related experience (highly preferred)
• 2 years of restaurant experience—hostess, manager, prep cook, server, bartender, etc. (preferred)

Skills

• Impeccable oral and written communication skills: whether it’s over email, phone calls, in-person meetings, text messages, or smoke signals, you talk and people listen.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively manage and delegate work to a team.
• Exceptional ability to build relationships and work well with a variety of individuals. You like talking to strangers, and they love talking to you.
• Proven ability to independently manage multiple projects and tasks at once, and effectively prioritize in a fast-paced work environment to meet tight deadlines.
• Must be comfortable with ambiguity, and able to work well without close supervision.
• Flexibility and ability to quickly adapt to new information.
• Demonstrated ability to analyze data to drive creative, effective strategies.
• Ability to proactively anticipate and solve problems. You ran out of ice? A server didn’t show up? Broken equipment? No problem, you resolve the issue on the spot (and probably already saw it coming).
• Strong organization skills with fastidious attention to detail. Your calendar freaks most people out, but you could tell us tomorrow’s schedule with your eyes closed.
• Proficient in Microsoft Excel.
• Sense of humor--you have a good database of cat .gif’s
• Passion for food and booze.

Compensation

this position is:

Application instructions

Deadline

no deadline