Brand Partnership Manager

NYC based high growth hospitality startup is looking for a Brand Partnerships Manager/ Sponsorship Manager. This person will have 4+ years of brand sales experience (ideally with a background in advertising, live events, sponsorships, or public relations), along with a passion for food and wine, entertaining, and storytelling. This person will be the second full-time hire devoted to brand sales, working closely alongside the C-Suite in an instrumental role forging new relationships with culturally-relevant brands, both Fortune 1000 companies and DTC disruptors alike. This person will wear many hats, including ideating F+B packages and special events, and liaising with all three of our stakeholders: diners, chefs, and real estate partners. This person will be extremely organized and obsessed with building processes and systems that save time and create financial efficiencies.

This quota-carrying position will involve full-cycle sales, including: prospecting, cold-outreach, pitching, fostering relationships, aligning on timing, sharing proposals, navigating legal revisions, and ultimately closing the sale. This role will focus on two distinct buyer personas: brands looking for scalable opportunities to share their story with a tastemaking and trendsetting audience, and teams looking for turnkey, one-of-a-kind press, VIP, and influencer events. This role will benefit from the ability to renew past clients, as well as our significant volume of inbound inquiries.

This person will thrive at problem-solving, whether it be a budgetary challenge, venue hiccup, chef ailment, or anything in between. This person will be relentless with follow-up, pushing all three stakeholders to align on details and commit to moving forward. This person will be an excellent communicator and able to convey thoughts clearly and effectively through both oral and written correspondence. This person will be obsessed with customer service and ensuring that each client comes back for more.

Our hire will be obsessed with food and drink and always be on the lookout for innovative collaborations, like-minded partners, and ways to improve our value proposition. And, like any early-stage company, this person will be a proactive, ‘no-task-too-small’ team-player that is willing to roll up their sleeves to build something incredible.

Compensation

• Base: $80K - $95K
• Annual Quota: $1MM (will be prorated based on start date)
  • Commission
    • 7.5% of Gross Profit from first dollar sold
    • Assuming avg. event profit margin 50%, commission at quota is $37.5K
    • After $1MM, rate jumps to 10% of Gross Profit
      • Commission for reaching $1.4MM = +$20K
    • Reach goal: $1.4MM = +$10K bonus
    • If you hit $1.4MM in your first year, you can earn $67.5K in commissions
    • $200,000 annual compensation cap
  • $9,375 in 'guaranteed commission' for first quarter during training (Q3 2023)
  • All sellers are currently on target to hit or exceed quota
• Benefits - 100% employer-sponsored healthcare (Aetna), 50% Dental, 50% Vision, One Medical membership, FSA, commuter benefits, and 15 days of PTO + 5 days of paid sick leave + 12 paid national holidays. Lots of delicious food, great wine, and compelling characters, including 8 tickets to events each year.

Responsibilities:

• Generating Leads - Responsible for proactively identifying, contacting, and qualifying sponsorship leads through Google search, referrals, LinkedIn, ticketed events, and more. You will own the sales cycle from initial call through sale
  • For the first 3 months, we expect that you will attend 1 dinner per week as an observer and continue to remain active at events to stay close to our experience, generate leads from the room, and hear firsthand customer feedback
• Experiential Advertising Sales – Working alongside the Chief Revenue Officer and Brand Partnerships Manager to earn revenue from brands, whether from wholly-owned brand experiences (i.e. press/influencer events) or strategic sampling and education opportunities (i.e. integrating into and sponsoring our ticketed experiences).
• Budgets, proposals, agreements, invoicing - Responsible for creating client proposals along with associated anticipated costs, meeting margins, and adequately reflecting all terms and conditions in event agreement templates. Responsible for gaining signature on agreements, invoicing, and confirming that payment has been collected
• Liaising between clients, the CSS team, and Operations team - Responsible for gauging chef and venue availability and presenting opportunities back to the client in a timely fashion, as well as conveying client requests to the Client Service & Strategy team
• Product innovation - Collaborating with the CRO and CSS team to grow our offering to meet unique client needs. Ensuring that all suggestions are operationally feasible, increase gross revenue or margin, and are scalable
• Customer Acquisition - Focusing on sales efforts inherently means this role will be extremely close to our demand generation funnel. This role will work collaboratively with the Senior Director of Marketing and will be critical in helping understand and optimize our CAC (Cost of Acquiring a Customer)
• Brand ambassador - Like all employees, you will be expected to be acutely aware of the brand's value proposition to all three key stakeholders and able to succinctly articulate our value proposition to each