Cafe jobs in United Kingdom

About us

Loungers is a substantial and growing operator in the UK hospitality sector, operating over 250 sites in England and Wales across three distinct but complementary brands, Lounges, Cosy Club, and Brightside. Founded in 2002 by three friends who wanted to create a neighbourhood café-bar that they would want to go to, the Group is now the only growing all-day operator of scale in the UK and has consistently outperformed the wider UK hospitality sector over the past three years. Despite being the fastest growing café/restaurant group in the Country, Loungers has retained its entrepreneurial spirit and quirky Loungey' local community atmosphere.

The role in a nutshell

We are looking for a passionate and proactive individual to take on an exciting new role within the UK's fastest-growing casual dining group. We are recruiting a Community Manager based in the North East Midlands region to oversee the community engagement and local marketing at 17 Lounges. This varied role will involve training and motivating teams, supporting them with their activity, and reporting on community engagement in the area.

The ideal candidate will have experience of delivering local events, a passion for charity activity, an understanding of social media and email marketing, and the ability to train, coach and nurture site-level teams. The Community Manager will understand that every Lounge is unique and work with our talented site teams to deliver bespoke activity for that Lounge.

• You will work closely with our Regional and Area Ops Managers to understand Lounge-specific opportunities and challenges
• You will work with the Lounge GMs to seek out Community Champions and Social Media Stars within each Lounge
• You will motivate, inspire, engage and nurture our Community Champions and Social Media Stars to deliver activity tailored to their Lounge

The role will involve working with those who don't have marketing experience, so you will act as a coach, supporting teams to engage with their community, promoting best practice but allowing them to have their own stamp.

This role is field-based, working closely with the Marketing team at HQ, the Regional Community Manager team, Operations Managers and Lounge teams.

This role has flexible working hours over 3 days.

Getting into the detail

Your role will be to seek out the community-focused people within each Lounge, nurture their passion and support them with bespoke plans. No two days will look the same but a week might see coaching teams on site, attending an Ops huddle, creating digital advertising for site events, brainstorming plans on a one-to-one and sharing ideas on regional WhatsApp groups.

Sales-driving:

• Work with ops team to identify focus sites in region
• Support creation of Community Action Plan (CAPs) in focus sites
• Highlight areas for improvement and new opportunities relevant to the customer base of the individual Lounge
• Help to identify local contacts and coach on best practices to connect including contacts at local BIDs, shopping centres and other potential partnerships
• Support the delivery of national brand activity, inspiring our teams to go above and beyond to tailor this to their Lounge
• Supporting new openings in the region

Charity

• Drive and support charity activity at site level
• Support national charity campaigns
• Work with each Lounge to identify ways to keep charitable activity at the heart of their site
• Support with reporting on donation totals to the regional and HQ teams

Coaching & Training:

• Quarterly community workshops
• Ongoing social media training
• Evolve community and social media training materials

Social media & email marketing:

• Regular social media audits of individual Lounge Facebook and Instagram
• Close working with HQ team to ensure centrally-created content is accessible for site-level communications
• Collate locally-relevant information for inclusion in email marketing

Reporting:

• Monthly reporting on events, charity activity, community action plans
• Monthly reporting on marketing metrics (social media, email)

Person Specification

• 2-3 years' min experience of national brand or local marketing
• Warm and approachable
• Passionate about doing good
• You must hold a full driving licence and own a vehicle to visit the Lounges in the region
• A people-person who is able to adapt to their audience whether speaking with a Regional Ops Manager or a team member in a Lounge
• Highly organised and comfortable working in a fast-paced multisite environment
• A self-starter
• Comfortable with being out and about
• Hospitality experience is advantageous

The good stuff

• What's in it for you?
• Fun office in the centre of Bristol
• A culture that appreciates ideas and celebrates individuality Founder-led business - we might have 230 sites, but we still maintain an entrepreneurial spirit through everything we do
• 50% off food at all Lounges, Cosy Clubs and Brightsides
• 10% bonus
• Pension contribution
• 24/7 mental health support
• Amazing events including LoungeFest our annual company festival - Christmas parties and more
• We want to work with nice people so if you want to work hard, have fun and be part of the Loungers ride, we'd love to have you.