Manager, Loyalty & Customer Engagement

About Sarku Japan:

Sarku Japan is the largest Japanese quick-service restaurant brand in the United States. Founded in 1987 and best known for its signature Chicken Teriyaki grilled fresh to order on a teppanyaki grill, the company operates nearly 200 U.S. locations across 30 states and approximately 40 international restaurants in Latin America.

Now backed by growth-focused investment and expanding aggressively into street retail, Sarku is in full transformation mode — evolving from a beloved mall food court staple into a scaled, multi-format brand with serious national ambitions. If you want to shape a brand at an inflection point rather than manage one at steady state, this is the role.

Position Overview:

The Loyalty & Customer Engagement Manager is a hands-on, data-driven role responsible for day-to-day management and growth of our loyalty program and customer engagement strategy (email, SMS, push/in-app). This role partners closely with the VP of Digital Marketing to execute a customer engagement plan that converts unknown to known to loyal guests and drives measurable increases in member growth, activation, frequency, and retention. This is a newly created role and will be a key member in bringing the next generation of loyalty and customer data activation to life.

Key Responsibilities:

Loyalty Program Management (End-to-End)

• Own day-to-day loyalty program operations: offer setup, QA, launch execution, and ongoing optimization
• Plan & manage the loyalty calendar and coordinate key launches with marketing, operations and finance
• Build and maintain a test-and-learn roadmap to continually strengthen our offer strategy, value strategy and segmentation strategy
• Support loyalty product enhancements by translating business needs into requirements and working with internal teams/vendors

Customer Engagement & Lifecycle (Email/SMS/Push)

• Manage our loyalty platform and execute lifecycle journeys across onboarding, activation, retention, and win-back
• Build segmentation and targeting to improve personalization efforts and performance (new vs lapsed vs high frequency, etc.)
• Partner with creative/brand to ensure messaging is on-brand and clear, with strong offers and CTAs

Customer Data Capture & Growth of Known Guests

• Improve member acquisition and “known guest” growth through improving & innovating new data capture moments
• Help define what data we collect and how it’s used to drive personalization and smarter offers

Analytics & Reporting

• Track and report weekly/monthly loyalty performance and campaign results
• Help define KPIs and dashboards; turn results into actions (what to scale, refine, or stop)
• Monitor offer economics (redemption rate, effective discount rate, trade-down risk) and recommend guardrails

Cross-Functional & Vendor Management

• Partner with Ops, IT, Customer Care, and vendors to ensure loyalty works smoothly across app, online ordering, and in-store
• Coordinate troubleshooting and issue resolution to protect guest experience.

Qualifications

• 3–5 years of experience in loyalty, CRM, lifecycle marketing, or customer engagement (QSR/restaurant, retail, or hospitality preferred)
• Experience executing campaigns across email/SMS/push and managing a promotional calendar
• Strong analytical skills (can interpret performance, spot patterns, recommend next actions)
• Comfortable operating cross-functionally in a fast-paced environment; strong project management
• Highly detail-oriented with strong project management and follow-through; able to manage multiple workstreams
• Punchh experience preferred (offer setup/QA/reporting and basic program administration)
• Nice to have: familiarity with app online ordering ecosystems and how loyalty integrates into them

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

Sarku Japan 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 characteristic protected by state or federal law.