Job Title: Operations Manager – Primary Schools Catering
Hours: 40 hours - Monday-Friday
Contract: Term Time only plus two weeks (40 working weeks, 45.6 paid weeks)
Location: Bedford, Huntingdon and Cambridge
Salary: Competitive
The Company:
Lunchtime Co. is a successful and respected regional company providing over five million school lunches to children in schools across Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and London. We are passionate about our people and believe in a collaborative approach to businesses, whilst rewarding our teams and ensuring our customers are at the heart of what we do. We believe in internal progression to enable our staff to grow and flourish.
The Job:
We are looking for a new Operations Manager to join our East Anglia Team. You will be working in partnership with our schools in and around Bedford, Huntingdon and Cambridge. You need to understand the benefits of working closely with the onsite catering teams and empowering, rewarding and recognising each of their teams.
We need you to be an experienced manager having previously worked in contract catering, ideally within the education market and have multi-site management experience. Craft-trained candidates very welcome.
Main Duties and Responsibilities:
* Working with staff teams to encourage ‘self-management’
* To ensure high levels of communication with all stakeholders (students, parents, teachers, governors and local communities)
* Work with schools and our development chefs to deliver a fabulous choice of food, where there is always something delicious available for every student
* To propose and run added value initiatives (cookery lessons, theme days, taster sessions, pupil surveys, school councils, barbecues, picnics, recycling, waste reduction strategies)
* Provide initiatives to showcase quality and choice of food on offer and to encourage uptake and satisfaction
* To lead on recruitment for your schools
* As required work with each school to provide breakfasts, after-school snacks, hospitality and holiday club catering.
* Lead on training and compliance within your schools
* Provide detailed, written, monthly performance and satisfaction reports for each school
* Set and manage school and company budgets
* Strategic management to drive financial performance and improvement whilst enhancing the student experience and client satisfaction level
* Be fully accountable for the schools assigned to you
* Manager human resources within your team with support from the central human resources team
* Lead on retention of your schools and support on new business
What You'll Need to Succeed:
* Ideally, experience in education contract catering
* Must have multi-site management experience
* Passion for great food and service
* Strong team management experience
* Excellence written and verbal communication
* Working knowledge of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams)
* Ability to work under pressure
* Ability to work in a team but also individually
* Ability to collaborate across all functions of the business
* Excellent time management and organisation skills
* High attention to detail
What We Can Offer You:
* Competitive salary
* Term Time, working 40 weeks per year, paid for 45.6 weeks
* Monday to Friday only, limited evenings and no weekends
* All business travel expenses paid from your home
* Company pension scheme
* Life insurance
* Employee wellbeing programme
* Growing, welcoming, friendly but professional company to work for where you can make a real difference and be truly valued
A Little More About Lunchtime Company:
Lunchtime Company is an established high-quality contract catering company providing outstanding food, service and vision to schools in both the public and private sectors.
As a specialist school food provider, we offer a dedicated and tailored service.
The sourcing of good quality and local ingredients is one of our key priorities and we have a team of expert chefs that train our school kitchen teams to produce fabulous tasting food which looks good on the counter and tastes great on the plate.
We passionately believe in working in partnership with our schools and are committed to creating long term relationships. We have a genuinely flexible approach to everything from individually created menus to service style and added value initiatives such as cookery clubs, food demonstrations and curriculum-based theme days.
As well as providing fabulous food for schools, Lunchtime Company collaborates with all our schools to reduce food miles and single use plastics, whilst increasing recycling initiatives.
Lunchtime Company invests in all of our team members, ensuring they have the training and knowledge to provide a service you can be proud of.
Making lunchtime the highlight of your day.
Eligibility:
In line with the requirements of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996, all applicants must either be eligible to live and work in the UK or must obtain permits to work in the UK prior to application. Documented evidence of eligibility will be required from candidates as part of the recruitment process. All successful applicants will be required to undertake an enhanced DBS check including child barred list check.
Please note: Due to high volumes of applications received, if you have not heard from us within two weeks of your application, unfortunately you have been unsuccessful on this occasion.