Garden Centre Deputy Manager
Location: Lytham St Annes
Contract Type: Permanent
Hours: Full-time, 40 hours per week including weekends
About Us
British Garden Centres is the UK’s largest family owned garden centre group, with 80 centres nationwide. Founded by the Stubbs family, the business has grown rapidly through significant expansion and acquisitions, evolving from its first site at Woodthorpe Garden Centre into a national brand. The group now includes garden centres, restaurants, nurseries and distribution centres, employing more than 3,500 colleagues across the UK. Despite its scale, British Garden Centres maintains strong family values, a community focus, and a commitment to providing a welcoming and supportive environment for both customers and employees.
About the Role
From plants and gardening to gifts and home, our customers enjoy a unique shopping experience. Our retail teams pride themselves on offering expert advice along with friendly service. Join our amazing team today and become part of a team that consistently delivers high standards of customer service. The successful candidate should have proven managerial experience and be physically fit as this is a very hands‑on role and some heavy lifting may be required. A knowledge of plants would be a “nice to have” but is not essential to the role, however, excellent customer service and a high standard of visual merchandising is required as is previous retail management experience. They also oversee staff training and performance, ensuring a professional workplace culture, while fostering a supportive, positive, safe environment for all.
Key Responsibilities
* Supporting the Garden Centre Manager – Providing dependable day to day support, helping drive standards, service, and operational excellence across the Centre.
* Ensuring smooth daily operations – Overseeing the running of the Centre, maintaining strong routines, and ensuring all areas operate efficiently and safely.
* Upholding high standards – Maintaining exceptional presentation, compliance, and service levels, ensuring the Centre reflects the quality expected of British Garden Centres.
* Managing sales, stock, and displays – Supporting sales performance, monitoring stock levels, and ensuring displays are engaging, accurate, and commercially effective.
* Driving customer satisfaction – Championing a brilliant customer experience in line with expectations, ensuring every visitor feels welcomed and supported.
* Coaching and performance support – Providing clear guidance, motivation, and feedback to team members; managing workflow, delegating tasks, and ensuring appropriate cover throughout the day.
* Communicating with impact – Acting as a positive, confident communicator who motivates others, builds strong relationships, and fosters a supportive team culture.
* Championing customer service excellence – Taking accountability for delivering outstanding service and maintaining a keen eye for detail across all customer touchpoints.
* Problem solving and solutions thinking – Approaching challenges with a calm, solution focused mindset, using strong problem solving skills to keep operations running smoothly.
* Maintaining Health & Safety standards – Ensuring safe working practices, supporting compliance checks, and promoting a safe environment for customers and colleagues.
* Building strong working relationships – Using excellent interpersonal and organisational skills to collaborate effectively with colleagues, departments, and management.
* Using Microsoft Word and Excel – Utilizing basic Microsoft Office skills.
About You
* Strong horticultural knowledge (plants, growing, pests).
* Proven retail management and leadership abilities.
* Budgeting, stock control, and merchandising skills.
* Excellent communication, customer service, and problem‑solving skills.
* Hands‑on, proactive, and able to work indoors and outdoor.
* Flexibility (weekend work common) with days and hours worked to meet business needs.
What We Offer
* Employee discount across our Garden Centres, Restaurants and Leisure Park.
* Free onsite parking.
* Our team lives our PROUD values – passionate about what we do, taking ownership, supporting one another, and continually growing and developing together. We listen, we show that everyone matters, we value and respect each other, and we lead with fairness and consideration.
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