Founded in 2003 Wasabi's vision is to lovingly create and serve delicious Asian food for a busy nation.
Wasabi now has 42 thriving restaurants across London and major UK cities and 4 in New York and in 2019, we introduced Wasabi Home Bento the grocery channel, launching exclusively in Sainsbury’s. Building on that success, the grocery business broadened its reach to Tesco in September 2022, followed by exciting launches in Co-op and Morrisons in 2024. Wasabi grocery has seen phenomenal growth and is now a £62m RSV brand. Wasabi proudly stands as the No. 2 chilled ready-meal brand in the market, consistently attracting new customers to the category through an innovative East Asian range.
Wasabi’s menu is celebrated for its unique character, exceptional freshness, and bold flavours. Our diverse range is designed to delight a wide audience, delivering both comfort and excitement with every bite.
We have an ambitious 5-year growth strategy, focusing on new restaurants, franchise partnerships, and international expansion.
As we prepare for our next phase of growth and innovation, we have an incredibly exciting opportunity for a Head of Manufacturing and Supply Chain to join our Team based in Park Royal.
The Role:
This is a pivotal leadership role at the heart of Wasabi’s next phase of growth. The Head of Manufacturing and Supply Chain will lead the end-to-end manufacturing and supply chain operation at Park Royal, ensuring the business can scale with pace, consistency and excellence.
The role spans the full operating model — from raw material planning and supplier performance through to high-quality food production, warehousing, dispatch and nationwide distribution across retail, grocery and franchise channels.
Working closely with the Leadership Team, this person will translate commercial ambition, innovation and customer requirements into efficient, scalable, high-volume operations. Success in the role will come from building high-performing teams, embedding continuous improvement and delivering outstanding service, quality and cost performance.
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead a multifunctional organisation of circa 300 colleagues across supply chain, manufacturing, engineering, warehousing, dispatch and hygiene, building a high-performance, quality-led culture.
- Act as a visible role model for Wasabi’s values and culture, leading with credibility, energy and a hands-on mindset.
- Develop strong leaders and teams through coaching, knowledge sharing and clear accountability for performance.
- Oversee workforce planning and labour optimisation across all teams, balancing productivity, cost control, retention and meaningful employment.
- Drive the manufacturing and supply chain operation towards best-in-class performance by embedding continuous improvement across all factory and logistics activities.
- Optimise systems, processes, ERP capability and manufacturing equipment in partnership with IT to maximise productivity, efficiency and operational visibility.
- Build and develop a world-class engineering function, embedding best practice total preventive maintenance to improve reliability and reduce downtime.
- Remain agile in day-to-day leadership, flexing focus as needed to support critical business priorities in a fast-growth environment.
- Build strong internal customer partnerships to ensure food quality, service levels and budget expectations are consistently achieved.
- Translate new product development, menu changes and product enhancements into scalable, efficient factory execution.
- Own product quality and customer service outcomes, driving improvements in service levels, minimum life on receipt, waste and complaint reduction.
- Create and sustain robust feedback loops from internal teams, grocery, franchise partners and end customers to continuously raise production and service standards.
- Lead and evolve Wasabi’s end-to-end supply chain and distribution strategy to support growth across retail, grocery and franchise channels.
- Manage third-party logistics and supply partners to ensure performance, service and cost objectives are delivered consistently.
- Develop effective supplier relationships that strengthen quality, resilience, value and operational performance across the network.
- Take full ownership of the functional P&L, improving margin, value and operational efficiency across all product lines and routes to market.
- Set, track and improve key operational KPIs, providing clear performance insight and progress updates to the Leadership Team and investors.
- Ensure the highest standards of food safety, hygiene, HSE compliance and BRC performance, with robust action plans to continuously strengthen compliance and audit readiness.
- Partner effectively with cross-functional leaders to build the plans, infrastructure and operating capability required to support Wasabi’s growth ambitions.
- Champion Wasabi’s ESG agenda through innovation in waste, energy efficiency, sustainable production and social mobility.
- Stay close to emerging best practice and innovation in sustainable food production, implementing practical solutions that reduce environmental impact and strengthen long-term performance.
Our Requirements:
We are looking for a commercially minded, operationally strong and values-led leader who can combine strategic thinking with hands-on execution.
This individual will bring the credibility, pace and judgement to lead a complex manufacturing and supply chain operation, while building the capability, systems and culture needed to support Wasabi’s continued growth.
The successful candidate will be an experienced senior leader from food manufacturing, supply chain or a related FMCG environment, with a strong track record of leading multi-functional operations, improving performance and delivering results across quality, service and cost.
They will be confident operating at both
strategic and operational levels, able to shape direction with the Leadership Team while staying close enough to the detail to ensure consistent delivery.
They will likely be degree educated or equivalent and will bring meaningful experience across high-volume food production, planning, supply chain, logistics and operational leadership. Experience in a fast-growth, multi-channel business, including retail, grocery or franchise, would be highly advantageous.
In return we provide:
- A great working environment
- Pension scheme
- Target Bonus
- Refer A Friend Scheme
- Free Sushi or hot food (vegan options available)
- 50% discount in our Branches
- Employee Assistant Programme
- Hybrid working model
- Long Service Awards
- Wagestream - a financial wellbeing benefit that lets you access your pay as you earn it in real time and manage savings
- Life Assurance
- Electric Vehicle Scheme through Octapus
- Cycle To Work
- Free on-site parking
- A variety of discounts (shopping, food & drink, entertainment and health & fitness) through Perkbox and
- The opportunity to develop your skills within a growing company.
Our people make us who we are. Join a company where you’ll have the opportunity to work for a growing company and build a real career.
COME ROLL WITH US!
