The Opportunity
Our client, Cactus Club Cafe, is one of North America’s fastest-growing restaurant brands, and it’s hiring a Vice President of Marketing to help lead its next chapter across Canada and the United States. It’s a rare chance to help lead marketing for a brand people genuinely love, work alongside a leadership team that has built something special over decades, and step into a senior role with real room to grow.
They’re looking for someone who has helped grow a brand into new markets and earned real customer loyalty from the ground up, and who wants to do it again inside a company with strong foundations and the ambition to match.
About Cactus Club Cafe
Founded in North Vancouver in 1988, Cactus Club is known for its elevated everyday dining that creates a sense of occasion, even when there isn’t one. The vibe is upbeat, stylish, and polished, fuelled by energetic music, great people, and spaces that feel as good as they look. The chef-driven menu delivers bold, refined dishes with something for every craving, fresh yet familiar, easy to love and easy to come back to. The brand promise is simple and deeply held: every guest leaves happy.
Cactus Club is privately held and growing in a deliberate, location-led way, with new restaurants planned across Canada and an expanding footprint in the United States. Through all of it, protecting what makes the brand special matters as much as growing it.
The Role
Reporting to the Executive Vice President of Marketing and Communications, the VP of Marketing leads the marketing function day to day, with significant ownership and room to grow the remit over time. The marketing directors and the public relations lead report through this role.
Day to day, the VP will:
- Own the full marketing remit: brand, growth and digital, communications and public relations, and the commercial side, including pricing. Set the strategy, and make sure it shows up consistently across every market and every restaurant.
- Lead, develop, and get the best from the marketing directors. Set the standard, make the resourcing calls, and build the team the next phase of growth needs.
- Build real partnerships with the people who run the restaurants and with leaders across operations, technology, real estate, and purchasing. Marketing here works because it stays close to the operators and the day-to-day reality of the restaurants.
- Drive guest frequency and loyalty, especially in newer markets where the brand is still earning its reputation, and lead the marketing behind new restaurant openings across Canada and the US.
- Use guest data and insight to steer decisions, measure what works, and keep lifting the return on every campaign.
- Bring outside experience and sharper thinking, and keep raising the standard of what the team produces.
What Success Looks Like in the First Year
The first few months are about listening and learning: the business, the brand, and the culture, and earning the trust of colleagues across the company, the restaurant operators above all.
Within the first year, a strong hire will have:
- Built genuine working relationships across the leadership team and the restaurants, and earned the right to lead.
- Learned the business deeply enough to bring outside thinking that genuinely fits it.
- Strengthened the marketing team and how it works, and made clear-eyed calls on resourcing.
- Supported the new US and Canadian openings and started to lift guest frequency in the markets that matter.
Who They’re Looking For
This role is as much about temperament as track record.
The experience that matters most:
- A business leader who leads marketing. Thinks across the whole business and reads the P&L, understands where growth and margin come from, and treats marketing as one lever of the company. Marketing here is scientific, numbers-driven, and tied straight to revenue, so the strongest fit leads like an operator who happens to own the brand.
- A builder. A track record of growing a consumer or hospitality brand into new markets and earning customer loyalty from the ground up. Experience entering the US or another new market is a strong asset.
- Senior marketing leadership with commercial and analytical range. Comfortable owning the numbers: the commercial side including pricing and return on spend, and the analytical side, reading guest data, measuring what works, and turning insight into decisions.
- A team builder. Has built, led, and developed a marketing team, and knows how to get the best from people.
- Sector is a bonus. Restaurant, hospitality, or multi-location consumer experience is an asset, and communications or PR experience is a plus, since PR reports into this role.
Just as important is how this person works:
- Curious, collaborative, and humble. Leads by listening first, builds relationships, and comes in to learn before asserting. Marketing is highly visible here, and the right person earns broad buy-in across the company.
- Disciplined and resourceful with money. Focused on making sure the marketing budget delivers real impact.
- Close to the business. Wants to be in the markets and in the restaurants, near the people who run them.
- Confident and secure. Senior enough to challenge thinking when it matters, and curious enough to know there’s always more to learn.
- A culture builder. Protects and strengthens a strong, long-standing culture.
Why This Role Now
The VP of Marketing steps in when the brand is strong and the growth is real. There’s genuine ownership, the backing of a leadership team that has built it with care, and the scope to shape marketing across two countries. For a builder who wants that kind of ownership and the chance to grow a brand people already love into new places, there are few opportunities like it in the Canadian market.
Location and Travel
The role is based in Vancouver. It includes regular time in the markets, roughly five to six weeks a year, weighted to the US and the other markets where the brand is growing, to stay close to the restaurants and the openings. Relocation to Vancouver is open for the right candidate.
