Production Manager - Bakery

Production Manager – Cake Factory

Job Summary

The Production Manager is responsible for planning, coordinating, and supervising the daily production of cakes and other bakery products. The role ensures that products are manufactured safely, efficiently, on time, and according to quality, food-safety, and cost standards.

Key Responsibilities

• Plan daily and weekly production based on customer orders and sales forecasts.
• Supervise production staff, including bakers, decorators, packers, and cleaning teams.
• Allocate employees, ingredients, equipment, and production time effectively.
• Ensure cakes meet approved recipes, portion sizes, appearance, taste, and quality standards.
• Monitor ingredient usage, production output, waste, and labour costs.
• Maintain appropriate stock levels and coordinate ingredient requirements with purchasing and warehouse teams.
• Ensure compliance with food-safety, hygiene, allergen-control, and workplace-safety procedures.
• Confirm that equipment is cleaned, maintained, and operating correctly.
• Investigate production delays, quality problems, customer complaints, and product wastage.
• Train, coach, schedule, and evaluate production employees.
• Maintain accurate production, temperature, cleaning, traceability, and quality-control records.
• Coordinate with sales, purchasing, quality assurance, maintenance, and dispatch teams.
• Support new product trials and improvements to recipes, processes, and packaging.
• Ensure finished products are completed, packaged, labelled, and dispatched on schedule.
• Prepare regular reports on output, efficiency, waste, downtime, staffing, and quality.

Qualifications and Experience

• Qualification in food production, baking, hospitality, operations management, or a related field is preferred.
• Previous supervisory or management experience in a bakery, cake factory, or food-manufacturing environment.
• Knowledge of food-safety systems, hygiene standards, allergen management, and quality control.
• Experience with production planning, stock control, staff scheduling, and cost management.
• Understanding of commercial baking processes and equipment is desirable.
• Basic computer skills and the ability to maintain accurate production records.

Required Skills

• Strong leadership and team-management abilities.
• Excellent planning, organization, and problem-solving skills.
• Good communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work under pressure and meet strict production deadlines.
• Strong attention to detail and commitment to product quality.
• Ability to analyses production results and improve efficiency.
• Willingness to work early mornings, weekends, public holidays, or additional hours when required.

Key Performance Indicators

• Achievement of daily production targets.
• On-time completion and dispatch of customer orders.
• Product quality and consistency.
• Ingredient and finished-product waste levels.
• Labour and production efficiency.
• Food-safety and workplace-safety compliance.
• Equipment downtime.
• Customer complaint and product-rejection rates.

Reporting To

Operations Manager and Managing Director

Employment Type

Full-time.