National Food & Beverage Manager

Home based

£42,000-£45,000 + company car + excellent benefits

Serco provides leisure services on behalf of Community Leisure Trusts, Local Authorities and sporting organisations such as Sport England. Our mission is to encourage our communities to participate in physical activity in a safe, clean, fun and friendly environment.

We now have an exciting opportunity for a National Food & Beverage Manager to join our friendly and successful team.

Reporting directly to the Commercial Director, the National Food & Beverage Manager will play a key role in shaping and executing the operational and commercial strategy for food, beverage and catering within Leisure. By utilising their expertise in catering, pricing, and identifying and targeting new customers, the strategy for our national offering and the growth of these revenue lines and profitability sits with this role. The role will have key accountability for stakeholder management, supplier management & procurement and will need to ensure that the training and development of site teams is achieved as necessary.

Duties will include working with the Commercial Director to develop a national food and beverage strategy designed to strengthen and grow catering across all our centres' cafes, along with a delivery plan for its introduction, roll out and ongoing management, the development and delivery of revenues in catering, food, beverage, & additional secondary spend through operational improvements, sales, marketing, and pricing initiatives, implement the strategy in partnership with the senior management team, contract management team and other commercial team colleagues, work with the relevant teams to develop the operational aspects of the food, beverage and catering aspects of the business to ensure that the current operations are delivering income and gross profit targets with robust processes and procedures, driving the best practice within catering to ensure it is fit for the delivery of targets and meets and exceeds all financial and KPI targets and be responsible for delivering best practice in catering across the Leisure business.

You will also identify new suppliers and commercial opportunities working with procurement to on board and embed in the business, support the business development team with any new bids, develop in partnership with other with key personnel and partners appropriate protocols and processes which will underpin the operation of the Leisure Centre cafes and vending, identify specific opportunities within the portfolio and ensure appropriate focus to drive a return, ensure an appropriate set of KPI’s are in place on which to manage business performance and be responsible for reviewing and interpreting targets and evaluating weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual performance via both existing and evolving KPI suites.

You will be responsible for vending machine contracts, multi-site cafe F&B development and so it is importsant that you come from a chain cafe background.

In addition, the role will require you to ensure appropriate analysis of catering income is available to support the business unit in all decisions, particularly new business, effectively manage any direct key partners, suppliers and stakeholder relationships to ensure the delivery of the National food and beverage strategy on time and to budget, hold regular reviews with Contract Managers to ensure operational delivery and revenues are to the desired level, ensure all standard operating manuals and training documentation is kept up to date and relevant, advise the business on any legislation or regulatory change to the catering landscape that need to be updated, changed or embedded into the business, deliver appropriate training, source courses and ensure mandatory and statutory qualifications are in line with relevant requirement and discussed with local management teams, manage and monitor key contracts with suppliers for all catering and vending requirements. Liaise and work in conjunction with procurement to ensure the best value and return for the business, and work with the procurement team to renew and re tender for contracts that are required including vending, servicing, supplies and machinery.

What You'll Need To Do The Job

First and foremost, you will be an experienced multi-site Food & Beverage Manager from a multi-site cafe environment with appropriate qualifications in Catering and/or Business Management, experience of developing and implementing programme strategies that led to business improvement in catering, and extensive experience of the operation and delivery of commercial catering in a cafe retail environment, with the ability to demonstrate a robust income improvement approach that has led to business improvement.

Experience of positive partnership working with partners, customers, suppliers and stakeholders is essential, as well as excellent communication skills, the ability to analyse and interpret data/statistics and excellent presentation skills.

You should also have good commercial awareness, strong IT skills, particularly Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and a full UK driving licence.

Please note, this role involves extensive travel throughout the country. You must hold a valid driving licence and be willing to travel to be considered.

Serco/Serco Leisure Operating Limited are appointed as the Trust’s Managing Agents. We manage the recruitment process and the Trust’s employees in the delivery of the service on their behalf. The Trust is committed to equal opportunities and requests any potential applicant to contact the Recruitment Team on 0345 010 4000 as soon as possible if an applicant has any additional queries, requirements or will need additional time in submitting an application. Applicants should be aware that in line with the company’s policy, employees will have a DBS check where appropriate.

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