Culinary Operations Manager

Atisfood; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - GBP 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A fast-growing food brand in Greater London is seeking a Culinary Operations Manager to transform their food vision into operational reality. The role involves ensuring product creativity at scale, maintaining food safety standards, and delivering consistently across multiple sites. The ideal candidate will have experience in multi-site food businesses and hands-on experience in various operations. This position offers a vibrant work culture and competitive benefits, including paid community work days and a pension scheme.

Benefits

Prime central London office location

Dog-friendly office

Weekly travel card Zones 1-2

Annual salary reviews

25 paid holiday days + 8 days bank holidays

Paid community work day – 1 day per year

Working From Away (WFA) – 1 week per year

Sabbatical – 4 weeks after 3 years

Cycle to Work scheme

Employee Assistance Programme

Pension scheme (3% employer + 5% employee)

Frequent social events

Free meals

Discount codes for friends and family

Free merchandise

Investment in professional training

Qualifications

• Experience in multi-site food businesses, ideally 8-30+ sites.
• Hands-on experience in test kitchen or service.
• Excellent understanding of food safety and health standards.

Responsibilities

• Translate food vision into operational reality.
• Ensure product creativity works at scale and maintain food safety.
• Lead menu rollouts and maintain culinary standards.

Skills

Multi-site food business experience

Experience with fresh food

Hands-on experience in various business facets

Team player

Excellent palate

Understanding of food safety standards

Menu rollout experience

Recipe specs experience

Opening new sites experience

Growth phase experience

Understanding of GP and waste management

Quality-driven mindset

Coaching kitchen leaders experience

Job description

Salary

Market-related salary, negotiable depending on experience

About atis

We’re a fast-growing food brand with big ambitions and bold ideas. Our mission is to bring real, nourishing, vibrant food to people in a way that feels fresh, modern and full of energy. We don’t do beige. We do colour, creativity, culture – and we’re building a brand that reflects that.

Every day, we make powerful food that’s full of flavour, full of colour and full of intention. Real food, done really well – all served fast, in vibrant spaces that move with the rhythm of city life. We’re here to transform people’s health and fuel better days. We are building a community that celebrates good food, good people and good energy – unapologetically.

About the role

As Culinary Operations Manager, you will be responsible for translating atis’ food vision into operational reality. This role ensures that product creativity works at scale, tastes as delicious as it did in the concept tasting, is executable across 16+ sites and is delivered consistently – while maintaining exceptional food safety, food quality standards and profitability. You will sit at the intersection of Product, Operations, Commercial and group Kitchen Management, acting as the ambassador for ensuring our food reaches customers smoothly, to exacting food safety standards, and extremely delicious.

Focus

Your focus is on turning great food ideas into flawless, scalable execution across the atis estate. You will ensure that every dish is delicious, consistent, safe and commercially sound. From early concept through to launch and live performance, you will stress-test, simplify and refine – protecting quality while embedding standards so that what lands in our kitchens works brilliantly in every site.

Typical Work Includes

• Operationalisation of all new menu items and collaboration launches
• Partnering with Product on development and translating concepts into scalable, site‑ready recipes
• Stress testing menus for speed, complexity, waste, margin, and training load
• Running kitchen trials, pilots & pre‑launch validation for every new menu launch
• Creating recipe specs, build guides, prep flows, and equipment requirements
• Ensuring flawless menu rollouts across the group
• Being present in the site kitchens during seasonal & core menu launches
• Setting & maintaining culinary standards across the estate
• Running regular audits and taste panels
• Owning corrective actions when standards slip
• Ensuring all recipes, processes and specs are food‑safe compliant, working closely with Ops on HACCP, allergen controls and EHO readiness
• Embedding food safety as part of great food, not separate from it
• Partnering with Product, Supply and Commercial on ingredients specs, yield optimisation and profitability, without compromising quality
• Uplifting culinary capability across the business
• Working with the L&D team to build and deliver simple but engaging training for the BOH teams
• Coaching kitchen managers and leaders on standards, execution and compliance

Skills / Experience

• Experience in multi‑site food businesses, ideally 8‑30+ sites (QSR, fast casual, casual dining, premium cafe groups)
• Experience working with fresh food, scratch‑cooking, short shelf life product
• Hands‑on experience across various facets of the business; test kitchen, head office, service
• Team player, used to working closely with Product Development, Ops, Supply Chain, and Commercial
• Excellent palate and understanding of flavour balance
• Strong understanding of all fundamental food safety and health and safety standards
• Has personally delivered or heavily supported menu rollouts and major menu changes at scale
• Has owned or heavily influenced recipe specs, guides, kitchen SOPs, launch playbooks
• Experience opening new sites from a food readiness perspective
• Comfortable working in businesses going through rapid growth
• Understands GP, labour, throughput and waste management
• Deeply quality‑driven but operationally pragmatic
• High standards, low ego
• Obsessed with making things work, not just designing them
• Experience coaching and upskilling kitchen leaders and teams

Mindset

You’re obsessed with making things better, not just acceptable. Naturally proactive, you spot issues before they evolve and take full ownership of the process end‑to‑end. You are commercially curious, not purely culinary, demonstrating a balanced perspective that marries food excellence with business reality. A pragmatic idealist, you care deeply about food whilst accepting the constraints of what is operationally possible. You value consistency as much as creativity and you thrive at the centre of things – collaborating across teams. You like to be in the middle of things, not operating in a silo.

Why atis

• We’re building a bold, flavour‑first brand that is shaking things up in the food space
• You’ll have creative freedom and real ownership of your work
• Work with a growing, ambitious team that cares deeply about food and people
• We move quickly, trust generously and love big ideas
• Lots of real, bold food to fuel your ideas

What we offer you

• Prime central London office location
• Dog‑friendly office
• Weekly travel card Zones 1‑2
• Annual salary reviews
• 25 paid holiday days + 8 days bank holidays
• Paid day of community/charity work – 1 day per year
• Working From Away (WFA) – 1 week per year after a minimum tenure of 1 year service
• Sabbatical – a sabbatical of 4 weeks after 3 years of service
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Pension scheme (3% employer contribution + 5% employee contribution)
• Frequent social events, head office and company‑wide
• Free atis for lunch or dinner
• Discount codes for friends and family
• Free atis merchandise (cap; tee; tote)
• High‑performing, focused, caring office working environment with promise for growth professionally and personally
• Investment in professional training and development
• iMac Desktop or laptop for field‑based roles