Senior Area Manager

Senior Area Manager | Food Retail

We’re looking for a Senior Area Manager who knows how to run a large, busy operation and get the best out of the people running it.

This is a multi-site role across London, leading a team of General Managers and taking responsibility for the performance of a large group of sites.

The business is growing quickly, opening new locations and investing heavily in its existing estate. They need someone commercially strong who can look at a region, spot what isn’t working and actually do something about it.

The role

You’ll be responsible for the day-to-day and commercial performance of your region.

That means working closely with your GMs on everything from sales and labour to customer experience, standards and team performance.

You’ll be:

• Coaching and developing your GMs and building a stronger leadership bench
• Owning the regional P&L and making sure the numbers stack up
• Looking at sales, labour, costs and profitability and understanding what is really driving performance
• Working with sites that aren’t hitting target and putting proper recovery plans in place
• Sharing what works across the region and raising the standard across the estate
• Keeping customer experience, food safety and operational standards where they need to be
• Supporting new openings, refurbs and other changes across the business
• Working with the senior team on wider commercial and operational priorities

You won’t be sitting in an office looking at reports all day.

You’ll be out across your sites, working with your GMs, seeing what’s actually happening and making decisions.

You’re likely to be an experienced Area Manager or Senior Area Manager from food retail.

You’ll already be used to managing multiple locations, sizeable teams and managers who have managers.

You’ll also be comfortable with the commercial side of the job.

We want someone who can look at a P&L and know where the opportunity is. Someone who can walk into a site, quickly work out what’s going on and have the conversation needed to move things forward.

You’ll need:

• Strong multi-site food retail experience
• Experience leading through Store Managers, GMs or equivalent
• A strong understanding of sales, labour, costs and profit
• Evidence of improving performance across multiple sites
• A coaching-led approach to leadership
• The confidence to challenge poor performance
• Strong operational standards and attention to detail
• The ability to work with data without losing sight of the people behind it

Hospitality or food service experience could also work, but food retail is the sweet spot for this one.

Up to £75,000 + bonus + company car and fuel card, alongside private healthcare, pension, life assurance, holiday and flexible working.

If you’re currently an Area Manager in food retail and the idea of taking on a bigger, more commercially focused operation sounds interesting, get in touch with Bite Talent for a confidential conversation.

Full details of the business will be shared once we’ve spoken.