Senior Operations Manager

Our client is a fast-growing, founder-led restaurant brand with a loyal customer base. After several years of product refinement and consistent commercial success, the company is now entering an ambitious scale-up phase.

They combine high-quality food, efficient operations, and a modern, service-driven approach. Preparing to expand rapidly across multiple locations. This is an opportunity to join a brand at the moment when the foundations are being built, while the real scaling journey is still ahead.

The
Senior Operations Manager
will play a central role in shaping how the organisation grows, operates, and delivers excellence at scale. This is not a maintenance or caretaker role,
it is a builder role
.

You will design operational frameworks, refine processes, lead teams, and help scale operations from a small footprint toward a growing network of restaurants.

Your Mission

As Senior Operations Manager, you will own the operational performance of their physical stores ensuring quality, speed, hygiene, and profitability every day.

More importantly, this role is responsible for
building the operational engine for scale
. You will design processes, implement them, standardize them and turn a small number of restaurants into a model that can be replicated across multiple units.

You won't maintain a system. You will
help build it
.

Core Responsibilities

Operational Leadership

● Oversee day-to-day operations across all locations.

● Scale operations from current footprint to 50+ stores.

● Implement, optimise, and standardise SOPs for food quality, hygiene, service speed, labour planning, and cost control.

People & Team Development

● Lead, coach, and grow Area Managers, Store Managers, and Kitchen Teams.

● Create a high-performance, KPI-driven culture.

● Establish clear expectations, training structures, and accountability systems.

Performance & KPIs

● Establish dashboards and reporting frameworks.

● Manage and optimise COGS, labour efficiency, food cost, and NPS.

● Drive continuous improvement and identify operational bottlenecks.

Financial Ownership

● Hold full P&L responsibility for the physical business.

● Ensure profitability of each unit and the overall portfolio.

● Build financial discipline into daily operations.

Expansion & Roll-outs

● Lead the operational preparation and opening of new stores.

● Ensure systems scale smoothly across different markets.

● Build expansion playbooks for efficient replication.

Supply Chain (good to have)

● Improve procurement, supplier relations, and logistics.

Who You Are

You are a builder at heart, someone who thrives in fast-paced, high-growth environments.

You love structure, but you also enjoy rolling up your sleeves and getting hands-on.

You combine strategic thinking with operational grit, and you are motivated by creating systems that
scale successfully
.

Must-Have Experience

• 10+ years in restaurant or food operations.
• Operational leadership across at least 20 restaurant units (owned, franchise, or multi-unit).
• Full P&L ownership experience.
• Track record of scaling a concept (e.g., from ~5 to 50 sites or a similar growth phase).
• Experience developing operating systems, not only executing them.
• Strong analytical, data-driven working style.
• Deep process, structure, and organisational thinking.
• Fluent in German and English.

Why this role is exciting:

• You join at the
  inflection point of scale
  . Moving from a small footprint to rapid expansion across multiple locations
• You will
  build the operational engine
  that powers national growth
• Direct collaboration with the founders, fast decisions, real ownership
• Significant impact: early enough to shape the system, late enough that scale is real

This is a confidential retained search. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

For more information, contact the executive search team at Lista Ventures.