Industry:

Café / Casual Dining / Multi-Branch Hospitality

Reports To:

Founding Directors

Role Overview:

A fast-growing, multi-format café and food-led hospitality business is looking for an entrepreneurial, systems-driven Chief Operating Officer to lead its next phase of scale. The business currently operates multiple flagship cafés and smaller-format pastry/coffee outlets, with further expansion planned through company-owned and franchise-led growth. This role will act as the operational right hand to the founders, replacing an outgoing strategic consultant and building the systems, people, and governance needed for scale.

Key Mandate:

The COO will lead all head office and operational functions, ensuring strong coordination between branch operations, people, supply chain, service standards, training systems, and expansion readiness. The ideal candidate is a hands-on systems builder with strong restaurant, café, QSR, or chain hospitality experience.

Key Responsibilities

• Head Office Management: Ensure harmony, prioritisation, and high-velocity coordination across all support and operational departments.
• Café Operations & Guest Experience: Own service flow, SOP execution, customer journey, and consistent in-store standards across all branches.
• Strategy Execution, Governance & Founder Alignment: Translate founder vision into execution plans, leadership dashboards, and cross-functional accountability.
• Product Quality & Training Excellence: Ensure food, pastry, and coffee consistency through strong training systems, audits, and branch capability development.
• Supply Chain, Procurement & Inventory Control: Drive supplier coordination, stock discipline, procurement controls, and cost-efficient inventory systems.
• People Operations, HR & Branch Leadership: Lead staffing structures, branch manager accountability, performance culture, and people decision-making.
• Financial Controls & Administrative Discipline: Strengthen branch paperwork, reporting compliance, reconciliations, and operational control processes.
• Franchise / Small Format Governance: Build scalable SOPs and governance standards for smaller-format and franchise-led expansion models.
• New Branch Launches & Scalability: Lead pre-opening readiness, launch planning, hiring, training deployment, and early-stage branch stabilisation.

Ideal Profile

• 8–12+ years in hospitality / chain restaurant operations
• Strong experience in multi-branch execution
• Deep focus on service and quality
• Capable of building SOPs, dashboards, and reporting rhythms
• Strong people leader who can make tough decisions
• Comfortable working closely with founders
• Experience in scaling emerging brands preferred

Success Will Be Defined By:

• Stronger service consistency
• Tighter branch controls
• Robust training systems
• Improved supplier coordination
• Better branch manager discipline
• Scalable launch systems for new branches
• Stronger founder reporting and execution cadence