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.

T&J Travel Centers

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Director of Food & Hospitality