About Us
Loungers is a substantial and growing operator in the UK hospitality sector, operating over c300+ sites in England and Wales across three distinct but complementary brands, Lounges, Cosy Club, and Brightside. Founded in 2002 by three friends who wanted to create a neighbourhood café-bar that they would want to go to. Despite being the fastest growing café/restaurant group in the Country, Loungers has retained its entrepreneurial spirit and quirky ‘Loungey’ local community atmosphere.
Community is the heart of everything we do at Loungers. We want our team to feel empowered to give back to their local community and support their local area. All our Lounges are given the freedom to run their own events and to create moments that are important to them and their customers. To support this, we have a Community team that oversee community engagement and local marketing. It’s important to us that we show up locally, that we join in, that we help out, and that we build real relationships in the places we’re in.
The Central Community Marketing Manager role exists to make sure community is brilliantly delivered throughout our Lounges. This leadership role is all about inspiring and empowering the Community Partners (North & South) to deliver community in a way that feels genuine, exciting, and personal to all our communities. This role will support the behind the scenes in delivering ‘how’ we make every lounge feel like a home away from home. You’ll own the national community operating model: the repeatable programmes every community loves, the creative campaign kits, the systems and compliance that make them easy to bring to life, the simple self-serve tools that allow our teams to “run it like they own it”, and the leadership of our two regional Community Leads (North & South) and community coordinator so adoption is consistent and scalable.
Your leadership will protect teams from reinventing the wheel, you’ll be key in guiding them in striking the balance between blue sky thinking and inspired but achievable ideas. You’ll keep the regional Community Partners doing what they’re meant to do: coaching and embedding - not becoming “doers”.
The role in a Nutshell
You’ll lead community. You’ll design and run the national community vision and presence nationwide. From the programmes, site kits, systems, comms and governance – all while leading your brilliant Community Team by driving passion, energy, and momentum resulting in the confident and celebrated adoption of community across the estate.
Getting into the detail
You’ll line-manage the North and South Community Partners and Community Coordinator and set the rhythm that keeps everything moving
* Set quarterly priorities and non-negotiables: what we’re driving, what “good” looks like, what matters most.
* Protect time and outputs: keep the team out of “helpdesk/doer” mode and focused on coaching and adoption.
* Weekly 1:1s and a weekly team rhythm: wins, adoption gaps, risks, upcoming moments, escalations.
* Allocate workload across regions (New Site Opening spikes, Community Action Plan bursts, sickness cover)
* Coach and develop skills such as influencing Operations teams, coaching standards, facilitation, and using insight (including Sprout) to drive focus.
Build repeatable national community programmes (kits that sites can actually run)
* You create the core formats and make them simple, safe and easy to execute consistently.
* You’ll continue to deliver what we already do brilliantly, from things like MacMillan to Sip & Paints
* You’ll have an ear to the ground when it comes to introducing new programmes. They’ll be scalable and the sort of things that become someone’s favourite part of the week
Own LoungeAid end-to-end
LoungeAid is one of our biggest community moments - you make it land brilliantly and credibly, every time
* Own the plan (summer + Christmas): proposition, timeline, and the national narrative.
* Own the assets sites need
* Own GDPR clarity: approved mechanics, compliant wording, and data handling/retention rules.
* Own tracking and national roll-up: keep momentum during the live period and land credible totals afterwards (with the regional Partners).
* Ensure charity records are clean and complete
* Build towards one united estate-wide LoungeAid story (a shared hook that every Lounge can join if they want).
You make sure Christmas community activity is properly built - safe, consistent, and ready-to-run
* From guest communication to Santa guidance, you’ll be all over the detail of how we land Christmas throughout our lounges. It will be safe and compliant but with a thread of that Christmas magic weaved through it!
Own Community Fund guidance helping sites to make the most of their annual budget
* Ensure every site makes the very best use of their community budget
* Share best practice and creative uses across the estate
* Own the rules, templates and comms blocks so regions aren’t re-creating guidance.
* Work with Finance on tracking and feed this into North/South for discussion with Ops
Be the person who makes sure the practical stuff is sorted so sites can deliver community brilliantly
* Ensure till buttons / EPoS set-up is in place and maintained for key formats and mechanics.
* Maintain a simple “what’s live” log so no one is guessing.
Implement continuous improvements to community through monitoring and insights
* You improve once for everyone — not via one-off advice.
* Monitor programmes with a lightweight framework (participation, attendance/fill where possible, repeat intent, qualitative learnings).
* Use learning to update kits and guidance.
* Use Sprout reporting to identify gaps, winners, and replication opportunities — and feed this to the regional partners so the spotlight stays on what works.
Make community information easy to find, current, and consistent
* Internal Comms: ensure the right operational info is there, GM-accessible, with correct links.
* SharePoint: definitive library; structure, naming, version control, “latest version” discipline.
* WhatsApp announcement channel: broadcast-only prompts with one clear action + one link (no replies).
* Lounge Lowdown: the inspirational comms home — provide content focused on celebrating, spotlighting, and prompting adoption.
Help local stories travel further by partnering with PR
* Work with PR so national releases can be localised with templated inserts and clear routes for sites.
* Ensure support is in place for key moments (LoungeAid, Christmas stunts) and sites know how to access it.
* Turn strong local stories surfaced by North/South into PR-ready inputs.
New Site Openings are delivered consistently well
* Ensure the New Site Opening (NSO) community starter pack exists, stays current, and goes out on time.
* Provide the “first 30 days” community playbook module for every new site.
* Maintain outreach templates (schools, groups, businesses) that can be localised.
* Ensure all NSO comms route through the single source of truth (SharePoint / Need to Know / announcement channel).
What You’ll Bring
* Above all you can inspire and excite teams across the country to put community at the heart of what we do
* You’re brilliant at turning ideas into processes and communication that can be easily followed, rolled out en masse, while still being exciting and community focused at their core
* You’ve got strong judgement: what needs governance, what needs flexibility, what needs a guardrail.
* You’re calm, organised and outcomes-driven - you ship, you iterate, you keep standards high.
* You’re a confident people leader who can coach, protect time, set non-negotiables, and keep a team on rhythm.
* You can build strong relationships with Operations partners. Influencing in a way that is collaborative, clear, and practical, while making the most of their insight and understanding of their lounges
What’s in it for you?
* 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays)
* Up to 10% bonus
* A culture that appreciates ideas and celebrates individuality
* Founder-led business - we might have c300 sites, but we still maintain an entrepreneurial spirit through everything we do
* 50% off food at all Lounges, Cosy Clubs and Brightsides
* Pension contribution
* 24/7 mental health support
* Amazing events including LoungeFest – our annual company festival - Christmas parties and more
* We want to work with nice people so if you want to work hard, have fun and be part of the Loungers ride, we’d love to have you.