Visitor Services Supervisor & Food & Beverage

ASVA: Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions; Glenfinnan; On-site; GBP 25,000 - GBP 30,000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent conservation charity in Glenfinnan is seeking a Visitor Services Supervisor to lead catering operations at its Visitor Centre. The ideal candidate will have strong leadership skills, exceptional customer service experience, and a commitment to food safety and hygiene compliance. Responsibilities include overseeing daily café operations, menu development, and managing a team of Visitor Service Assistants. This role plays a vital part in ensuring a high-quality visitor experience and involves financial management of the catering budget.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience in busy catering and sales environments, ideally in visitor attractions.
• Confident communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Computer literacy and familiarity with Microsoft software.

Responsibilities

• Lead menu development and ensure food quality and hygiene compliance.
• Supervise a team of Visitor Service Assistants and ensure excellent service.
• Monitor financial performance and assist in maintaining the catering budget.

Skills

Leadership

Customer service

Food safety compliance

Communication

Team management

Time management

Education

Level 2 Intermediate Food Hygiene Certificate

Current driving license

SQA recognized personal license

Tools

EPOS tills

Microsoft 365

Job description

Overview

Organisation: The National Trust for Scotland

JOB PURPOSE

This is a fantastic opportunity to work as part of our leadership team at the iconic Glenfinnan Monument and its Visitor Centre, which attracts hundreds of thousands of people from across the globe every year.

The Visitor Services Supervisor at a Trust property plays a pivotal role ensuring that the management objectives are achieved through excellent customer service and with delegated responsibility for catering duty management is very often the face of the Trust to visitors. As such directly influences public perceptions of the Trust and is significant to developing and maintaining the property’s reputation.

As one of two F&B Visitor Services Supervisors, you will be responsible for the day-to-day catering operations at our popular Viaduct View and Monument View takeaway cafes. You will deliver our quality standards and performance targets, ensuring we offer customers a fantastic Food & Beverage experience. You will be an enthusiastic team player who can supervise, coach and motivate your team. You will also be part of a broader duty management team responsible for promoting good communication across the site and a joined-up visitor services provision. As a charity, every penny we raise goes back into the National Trust for Scotland’s conservation work, caring for this special place. You will lead by example to produce an enticing Food & Beverage menu, to recommend and upsell our range, and to promote complementary income-streams like retail, memberships and donations. You’ll help answer visitors’ questions about things to do here and share your enthusiasm for Glenfinnan’s stories, the work we do and what their money is funding.

Key responsibilities and accountabilities

Catering operation

• Lead with menu development ensuring our cafes offering is appealing, profitable and sustainable.
• Lead with preparation, cooking, training and presentation of a high-quality food and drink offer.
• Ensure compliance with health and safety, food hygiene, food allergen, licensing and environmental health standards, completing all related record-keeping.
• Accountable for cost-effective stock management, ordering, storage and wastage control.

Visitor experience

• Offer excellent customer service and ensure all members of the catering team do the same.
• Support property-wide targets for completion of visitor surveys to understand more about our visitors.
• Act as one of our duty manager team, responsible for ensuring a safe and smooth visitor operation, opening/closing the visitor centre, addressing issues and emergency procedure and providing relief cover, as required.

People management

• Supervise the activities of a team of permanent and seasonal Visitor Service Assistants (VSAs), achieving excellent staff performance and motivation through effective induction, training, task-setting and coaching on front and back-of-house routines.
• Prepare catering rotas and holiday allocation to meet business needs.
• Work closely with specialist advisory colleagues, i.e. our Trust-wide Catering Development team.

Finance Management

• Share responsibility for achieving an F&B budget of around £500,000 a year.
• Monitor commercial performance and adjust activities to capitalize on sales opportunities and run a cost-effective catering operation.
• Supervise daily café till operations and perform end-of-day income reconciliation as a duty manager.
• Assist the F&B Manager with menu costing and stock-taking.

Performance indicators and targets

• Weekly, monthly and annual sales and cost of sales targets
• Food compliance standards and record-keeping
• Visitor enjoyment reviews and ratings from visitor surveys and visitor feedback
• Staff satisfaction from staff surveys

Tools / equipment / systems

• Access to laptop and relevant online people management, training, financial monitoring and stock ordering systems, including NTS intranet and Microsoft 365.
• EPOS tills and chip and pin machines.
• Fully equipped commercial catering kitchens.

Required qualifications, skills, experience & knowledge

Qualifications & knowledge

• Level 2 Intermediate Food Hygiene Certificate or above
• Current driving license
• Desirable… Qualifications in Catering, Hospitality, Tourism or Event Management
• Current First Aid certification (or willingness to train and use)
• SQA recognized personal license.

Experience & skills

• ‘Hands on’ working in a busy catering and sales environment, ideally in a visitor attraction setting
• Excellent leadership and influencing skills, supervising and supporting staff on a daily basis
• Enthusiasm for preparing and serving high quality food and drink.
• Passion for and ability to demonstrate the exceptional customer service required of all staff.
• Confident communication skills (written and spoken)
• Computer literacy and familiar with Microsoft software
• Experience with cash handling, monitoring, and interpreting financial data.
• Strong time management and organisation skills
• Ability to be proactive and to take initiative.
• Understanding of and belief in the work of the National Trust for Scotland

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