Manager, Strategy & Innovation

Based in Pasadena, California, Dine Brands Global, Inc. (NYSE : DIN), through its subsidiaries, franchises restaurants under Applebee's Neighborhood Grill + Bar, IHOP and Fuzzy's Taco Shop brands.

With over 3,500 restaurants combined in 18 countries and 354 franchisees as of December 31, 2023, Dine Brands is one of the largest full-service restaurant companies in the world.

For more information on Dine Brands, visit the Company's website located at www.dinebrands.com .

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The DINE Strategy + Innovation team reports directly to the CEO of Dine Brands. We work with every group across the business : Marketing, Culinary, Operations, Development, Consumer Insights, Finance and franchisee leadership committees.

The Manager will report to the Vice President, Strategy + Corporate Development and will be an individual contributor. Work spans a broad spectrum from big strategy questions looking over the horizon to regular business reporting and quick ad-hoc analytics.

Key responsibilities include :

• Serving as a thought partner and thought leader for the VP, Strategy and for the broader organization, across all functional areas (Brand Leadership, IT, Finance, HR) and levels, including regular interaction across the IHOP and Applebee’s teams.
• Responsible for ongoing management and growth of DINE’s efforts in retail licensing (a multi-million-dollar annual business).

This includes developing a pipeline of future licensing opportunities, directing agents, identifying CPG partners, negotiating deals, and project managing new product launches.

Day-to-day leadership of Dine’s M&A work, including networking with external partners (including investment banks, PE funds, etc.

evaluating potential acquisition targets, and helping to develop DINE’s perspective on inorganic growth levers.

Building a strategy capability across Dine Brands : identifying growth areas for the company to pursue based on analysis of macro trends and internal data.

Incorporating information into annual strategic plan and ongoing management of the business.

• Support the DINE Executive Team and Board of Directors with company performance reporting, trend analysis and hypothesis-driven insights.
• Collaborating closely with the Applebee’s and IHOP Consumer Insights and Business Analytics teams to bring together key insights from various teams into a synthesized, distilled and compelling answer.
• Starting salary $125k+.

WHAT we are looking for

• Work experience :
• Minimum 1-2 years of strategy consulting for a top tier firm or 2-3 years in a corporate role in Strategy, Product, Marketing or Finance.
• Preferably 1-2 years managing teams in a consulting or corporate role.
• Critical capabilities :
• Excellent analytical skills and attention to detail.
• Strong organizational skills.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including a strong aptitude for PowerPoint.
• Proficiency in Microsoft office applications, including : Excel, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Teams.
• Helpful industry experience :
• Restaurant industry.
• Franchisees and franchised businesses.
• Consumer Insights.
• Food / hospitality operations.
• Food / hospitality real estate development.
• Mergers & Acquisitions.
• Licensing.
• Personal traits we love :
• Curiosity paired with skepticism.
• Ownership mentality you see it as your responsibility to ensure things get done and to ensure guests have the best experience.
• You take your work personally and hold yourself to high personal standards you excel in your work for your own sake, not because anyone demands it of you.
• Comfort with ambiguity you can proceed confidently and efficiently with incomplete and imperfect data.
• Ability to pivot when new data comes in or decisions change, you can re-evaluate and continue driving forward, even if it may be in a new direction.
• Mental flexibility the ability to look at the same problem from multiple angles.
• Resilience the energy to keep trying those different angles until you find the one that works better.
• Structure the skills to ensure all those iterations make forward progress toward a clear goal.
• Creativity, storytelling the ability to wrap the analytical answer into something truly compelling that gives your colleagues the confidence to act.
• Energy, sense of humor.
• Strong personal interest in strategy at the highest levels of the organization.
• Passion for ongoing learning paired with a desire to drive tangible impact wherever you are.
• Ability to work well with a wide variety of perspectives, including an ability to create a path forward through disparate points of view.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Dine Brands Global strongly supports equal employment opportunity for all applicants regardless of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, marital status, veteran status, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, sexual orientation, genetic information, or any other status protected by federal, state, or local law.

All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act and / or other applicable laws and regulations in other jurisdictions.

Dine Brands reviews criminal history in connection with a conditional offer of employment. The following is a list of all material job duties which Dine Brands reasonably believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment : conduct necessary due diligence on business opportunities and transactions;

analyze and handle franchisees’ personal and financial information; and facilitate frequent and close interactions with franchisees and franchisee employees.

For information on how we collect and use your personal information, please visit our Applicant & Employee Privacy Notice .

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