Kitchen Manager

Dobbies Garden Centres Ltd; Preston; Hybrid; GBP 28,000 - 42,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous annual leave

Staff discount across stores

Access to wellbeing resources

Job summary

Dobbies Garden Centres Ltd is seeking a Kitchen Manager to lead the kitchen operation across our restaurant offerings. You will manage a team, ensure timely, high-quality meals and uphold food hygiene standards.

You’ll drive profitability through smart scheduling, waste reduction and continuous training, while creating a positive environment that supports staff development and excellent customer experiences.

Qualifications

• Experience in food service management with a focus on delivering quality meals.
• Strong understanding of budgets, profitability and control of costs.
• Ability to coach, train and develop teams to deliver great customer experience.
• Proactive in adapting to priorities, regulatory changes and seasonal demands.

Responsibilities

• Lead kitchen team to deliver efficient service within budget and standards.
• Ensure meals are presented well and served on time to customers.
• Maintain kitchen health, safety and food hygiene compliance.
• Inspire the team to deliver exceptional customer experiences daily.
• Foster a fun, productive environment and support staff development.

Skills

Team leadership

Budget awareness

Food hygiene knowledge

Coaching & training

Adaptability

Change management

Job description

Our Kitchen Managers play an essential role in delivering an exceptional customer experience across our restaurants - delivering tasty food, ensuring food hygiene, maintaining high operational standards and smashing commercial targets.

Responsibilities

• Leading the kitchen team, ensuring strong levels of service that are efficient, withing budget and compliant
• Ensuring that our customers are presented with their meals to a high standard and on time
• Maintaining a fully compliant kitchen with all statutory requirements of health & safety and food hygiene
• Sparking your team's passion for delivering the best food service and customer experience
• Creating a fun and productive environment for everyone to enjoy the day-to-day operations whilst thinking ahead to ensure all your team have a development journey with Dobbies

Who we are looking for

• Experience in food service, alongside management experience
• Commercial awareness and understanding of budgets, profitability from driving sales and improved ways of working
• Adaptability to identify training needs. You'll be effectively coaching and training all levels ensuring our teams are delivering an excellent customer experience and safe store environment
• You'll act quickly and enthusiastically to changing priorities, workload and new regulations or requirements
• Positivity managing change. You'll lead the team through each season with care and motivation to deliver the best
• Can demonstrate our values at all times - we're on team, getting better everyday. We bring a smile. We live and breathe gardens. We make it work for our customers.

What we offer

• Generous annual leave entitlement. Use your holidays when you want with limited statutory days off required
• Treat yourself with generous uncapped discount across our stores with 50% off in our Restaurants, 25% off in the Garden Centre and 10% off in our food halls
• Access to Stream – support your financial wellbeing, with ability to access earnings ahead of pay day, save for the future and financial advice
• Access to Retail Trust – seek confidential support, access to a virtual GP, free counselling service and discounted retail rewards with our employee wellbeing platform
• Access to Dobbies Academy – continue your development with our eLearning platform and development programmes
• Thriving culture; the Dobbies team are passionate, diverse and committed to making it work for our customers

About us

At Dobbies, we’re proud to have a history dating back to 1865. We were founded by James Dobbie and are the only garden centre retailer to have stores in every nation across the UK.

Our passion and joy for gardens and plants is what makes us special. In our stores, we showcase this through own brand and branded products,concession partners and services. We champion garden living all-year-round.

Many of our stores feature a restaurant or coffee shop, where customers can enjoy refreshments or meals in a relaxed and welcoming environment.

We offer a calendar of events and experiences that bring people and communities together, and we have a national charity partner that both our colleagues and customers raise money for.

We’re committed to being a great place to work. We’re one team and we encourage our colleagues to be the best version of themselves, every day; to share their wins and celebrate success. Together, we make it work for our customers.