Director of Brand Experience and Revenue Growth

The role in one line

Grow café sales by leading with experience. Bring new people in, bring them back, and lift what they spend while they're here.

About the business

Bewley's Grafton Street is one of Ireland's most recognisable hospitality names, family-owned, and trading from a protected heritage building in the heart of the city. The business runs three revenue centres: the Café, the Retail Shop and Events. The Café is the commercial engine, a 400-seat, two-floor, table-service operation expected to turn over around €5m in 2026.

This role reports directly to the Managing Director.

What this role is really about

This is not a traditional marketing role. The Director of Brand Experience & Revenue Growth will:

• Design and deliver a year-round programme of experiences and activations
• Monetise theatre, craft (tea, coffee, bakery), and cultural programming
• Increase turn-in rate, average spend, and repeat visitation
• Build a distinctive, intergenerational Dublin audience

The role carries defined revenue accountability and operates alongside Operations and Finance at senior leadership level.

We are not looking for someone to run the floor or run the operation. We have that. What we need is someone with enough operational nous to understand what it actually takes to deliver an experience, and to innovate around it.

Take a birthday experience. There are a lot of operational elements in that which have to be coordinated, the room, the cake, the candles, the coffees, the timing, the staff who deliver it. You cannot design that from a spreadsheet. You need to understand the machine well enough to build something the team can actually deliver, seven days a week, without it falling apart.

And the big prize is bringing people back. That is the whole game. Repeat custom doesn't come from clever marketing alone, it comes from the experience being right every time, which means operational excellence matters to this role even though the role doesn't own the operation.

So at a minimum, this person needs credibility with the operations team. They will be asking that team to come on a journey with them, and that only works if the team believes they know what they're talking about.

The priorities, in order

• Customer acquisition. Turn Grafton Street footfall and Bewley's reputation into first visits. Get new people through the door and give them a reason to choose us over everywhere else on the street.
• Retention and repeat custom. Turn visitors into regulars. Build the loyalty, CRM and reasons-to-return that make people come back and keep coming back.
• Spend per visit. Use experiences, events, seasonal programming and cross-sell into Retail and Events to lift the average spend, not just the head count.

The €5m Café is the engine you are growing, not simply the floor you are running.

What this looks like in practice

A worked example, one we've already scoped. The Harry Clarke Room · Baileys Birthday Experience:

• A bookable indulgent Baileys Birthday experience for four guests. Contemporary cake, coffees and friends, a genuine Insta moment. Candles supplied.
• Delivers on Craft and Culture, which is the brand line we want to lead with.
• Can be delivered in the guest's choice of location, either the Harry Clarke Room or the Bewley's Oriental Palm Room.
• Revenue: combined cake and Baileys coffees ticket for four at €75, inclusive of a 6 inch birthday cake. That's the minimum, as we'd expect repeat coffee orders on top.
• Deliverable seven days a week.

That's the shape of the thinking. A bookable product with a price on it, rooted in craft and in the building, that the operation can deliver repeatably and that gives people a reason to come back and to bring others. We want someone who can build a year-round programme of these, and make them work commercially.

What you'd be doing

• Own the experience proposition for the Café, from the everyday visit to the events and activations that make people talk about us.
• Drive customer acquisition through brand, partnerships, seasonal moments and the on-street opportunity a flagship location gives us.
• Build retention and repeat custom through loyalty, CRM, guest data and lifecycle marketing.
• Design experiences that the operation can actually deliver. That means working closely with the Operations Manager and the floor team, understanding the moving parts, and building things that hold up service after service.
• Carry credibility with the operations team and bring them with you. You won't be running them, but you will be asking them to deliver something new.
• Grow spend per visit and cross-sell into Retail and Events.
• Own the commercial numbers that matter to growth: covers, conversion, repeat rate, average spend and revenue.

Who we're looking for

A commercially minded brand or experience leader with a real growth record. Someone whose instinct is the customer and the sale, not the rota. Comfortable in a live venue and happy on the floor, but there to grow the business, not to supervise it.

Required:

• A proven track record in customer acquisition, retention and repeat custom, with numbers to show for it.
• Brand or experience marketing experience, ideally in food, hospitality, coffee, or destination retail where footfall and repeat visits are the game.
• Commercial literacy. Comfortable owning revenue, conversion and spend targets, not just campaigns.
• Enough operational nous to design experiences that can actually be delivered, and the credibility to bring an operations team with them.
• The presence and instinct to work in and around a busy, high-standards venue.

Preferred:

• Loyalty, CRM or lifecycle marketing experience at scale.
• Events, activations or partnerships that have driven measurable footfall or revenue.
• Experience of a flagship, heritage or highly visible venue.

Structure and progression

Reports directly to the Managing Director, working closely with the Operations Manager, alongside peer leaders across Bakery, Retail, and Events. There's room to grow. As we lead more with experience, the remit can broaden, so this is a role with a path, not a ceiling.

Why Bewley's

A clearly defined senior role with real scale, in one of Ireland's best-known hospitality institutions. The chance to grow a flagship €5m café within a disciplined, family-owned business that's in it for the long term.