Operations Manager – Dublin (Freelance)

About Eating Europe

Since 2011 we have grown from a single food tour in Rome into the largest culinary tour operator in Europe, with 23 cities and counting, and approaching one million guests hosted. We run small-group food tours, cooking classes, and private culinary events.

We work with Seabourn, Disney and Uniworld, and run private events for companies including Google and Microsoft. We have more than 80,000 five-star Tripadvisor and Google reviews, and our tours have been written about by The New York Times, Lonely Planet, Rick Steves and the BBC. Ten of our tours have received the 2026 Travelers’ Choice Award from Tripadvisor customers.

We are growing quickly, opening in additional cities across the globe as we continue to branch out from Europe into Asia, Latin America and beyond.

The opportunity

This is a founding role. There is no Eating Europe tour in Dublin yet. You would be the person who makes one exist, and then runs it.

Dublin has been on our list for a long time. It is a city where relationships matter more than almost anywhere else we operate. Vendors are protective of their businesses and of their city, and they do not open up to a company that parachutes in. That is precisely why we are looking for someone who already knows Dublin properly — its streets, its kitchens, its publicans — and who can walk into a room and be taken seriously.

The tour will be built around Temple Bar and the streets immediately around it. That is where the footfall is, where our guests already are, and where the product has to work. We are looking for someone genuinely excited about telling the story of Irish food in that part of the city.

You would work alongside Josh Harper, Senior Operations Manager (UK & Ireland), who will be your main point of contact. Together you would develop the tour with Katrina Brinckerhoff, our Chief Product Officer, and Leo Goldstein, our Experience Manager, who lead product development for every new city we open. You would bring the local knowledge, do the groundwork, and run it once it launches.

What the engagement involves

Getting the tour built

• Finding and securing the vendors — restaurants, pubs, producers, food halls — and negotiating what we pay them
• Walking and testing the route with Katrina, Leo and Josh, and telling us honestly what works and what does not
• Helping us plan daytime and evening departures
• Organising and taking part in the launch photoshoot and site visits

Running the operation

• Vendor orders and day-to-day vendor communication: numbers, special requests, dietary requirements
• Keeping vendor relationships warm, and flagging early where one is not working
• Collecting and checking vendor invoices at month end
• Managing the tour calendar and occupancy in our booking system
• Watching sales across departures, and closing or consolidating them to improve occupancy
• Troubleshooting on the day of tours
• Liaising with our Customer Service team on private tours, custom routes and corporate enquiries

Guiding

• Guiding the majority of Dublin departures yourself, in English, to the standard our guests expect
• Looking after guests properly when something goes wrong — late arrivals, dietary requirements, a vendor closing unexpectedly

Building the guide team

• Finding, recruiting and training additional guides as volume grows
• Building the monthly guide schedule and syncing it with the booking platform
• Being the point of contact for guides, and holding regular catch-ups

Month-end

• Reconciliation and reporting, and filing invoices for payment
• Regular catch-ups with Josh on how the city is performing

How the engagement works

This is a freelance engagement. You will contract with Eating Europe Inc. as an independent business, supplying services to us. You decide how you deliver them; we agree what needs delivering and to what standard. You are free to work for other clients, and you are under no obligation to accept any particular assignment.

You will be responsible for your own invoicing, tax and PRSI contributions in Ireland, and for any registration or insurance your own business requires. We pay against invoice; we do not withhold or administer tax on your behalf. You should be registered as self-employed with Revenue, or able to register before starting, and able to issue invoices.

Fees

Fees are metered: most of what you earn depends on how many tours actually run. The structure is a one-off tour development fee, a per-tour guiding fee that varies with experience, a per-departure coordination fee, a fixed monthly amount covering month-end administration, and an hourly rate for ad-hoc work agreed in advance.

We will give you the full figures in our first reply, before you put any time into a video or an interview.

What we offer besides the fees

• A genuine founding role. You will shape what an Eating Europe tour in Dublin is, and it will carry your fingerprints for years.
• Real autonomy. We are not going to tell you how to run your day.
• A place at our annual team retreat — the whole network comes together once a year, and it is the best few days of our calendar.
• Free Eating Europe tours in our other cities, plus discounts for your friends and family.
• A path that grows with the city.
• A warm, international group of people who care a great deal about food and about doing this well.

Who we are looking for

Essential

• Resident in Dublin for a significant period, with deep local knowledge of the city, its neighbourhoods and its food
• Genuine enthusiasm for Irish food and for Dublin’s food scene — you will be selling it to guests several times a week, and it shows when someone does not mean it
• Experience in front of paying guests: guiding, hosting, performing, teaching, or another role where you have held a room for a couple of hours
• Excellent spoken English: confident, natural, and able to hold a group’s attention for three hours
• Confident dealing with small business owners — negotiating terms, chasing invoices, holding a relationship together when something has gone wrong
• Organised and self-directed. Nobody will be checking up on you, which only works if you do not need chasing
• Available at weekends. This is when most of our tours run
• Registered as self-employed in Ireland, or able to register before starting, and able to issue invoices

A big plus

• An existing network among Dublin restaurants, pubs, producers or the wider hospitality trade. In this city that is worth more than almost anything else on this list
• Experience with food, drink or culinary tours specifically, or a background in hospitality, restaurants or food writing
• Experience building something new rather than running something that already exists
• A background in acting, performing, writing or storytelling — some of our best guides come from there rather than from tourism
• Experience finding, training or coordinating other guides
• Additional languages

How to apply

Apply through this posting, or send your CV and a short note on why this role interests you to Michael Scott Kline, Director of People & Culture, at [email protected], and tell us what your favourite thing to eat in Dublin is, and where you would take us for it.

What happens next

We would rather be clear about this than have you wonder, so here is the whole process:

1. Application. A few questions when you apply, covering the things we are not able to be flexible about.
2. A short video. If your application looks promising, we will ask for 60–90 seconds, in English, about one place in Dublin you would take a visiting friend to eat, and why. Filmed on your phone is completely fine — we are interested in you, not in production values.
3. Interview. A video call with Michael and Josh.
4. Final conversation. The last two or three candidates meet Michael together with members of our senior leadership team. Before we make an offer we typically ask for two professional references, whom we will contact in confidence.

We welcome applicants of all backgrounds.