WANTED - GENERAL MANAGER
WITH A PROVEN TRACK RECORD
Surf. Coffee. Retail. Community.
SOS Surf | Westward Ho!, North Devon
This isn’t a standard General Manager job.
SOS sits just seconds away from the Beach in Westward Ho!, bringing together surf, speciality coffee, retail, events and a growing community of people who would rather spend their time near the ocean.
We’re looking for someone exceptional to help lead what comes next.
Someone who genuinely loves surf culture and understands why great coffee matters.
Someone with experience, ideas and energy. Someone who sees what needs doing and gets on with it. Someone who can lead a team, grow a business and still care about the small details a customer notices.
Most importantly, we’re looking for someone who can run SOS with an owner mindset.
THE ROLE
You’ll take a leading role in the day-to-day operation and continued development of SOS.
That means moving comfortably between retail, coffee, people, numbers, events and community.
One morning you might be looking at sales and staffing. The next you’re working with the team on a new product launch, improving the customer experience, planning an event or figuring out how we turn a quiet Tuesday into a better trading day.
You’ll have autonomy, but with that comes responsibility.
We don’t want someone waiting for a list of jobs.
We want someone making the list.
YOU’LL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR
- Leading, motivating and developing the SOS Surf team.
- Driving sales and commercial performance across the business.
- Making sure the operation runs brilliantly every day.
- Managing rotas, staffing levels and labour costs intelligently.
- Maintaining high standards of customer service, presentation, cleanliness and operations.
- Understanding the numbers and using them to make good commercial decisions.
- Bringing forward ideas for products, events, collaborations and ways to grow the business.
- Building relationships with customers, suppliers, local businesses and the wider surf community.
- Taking ownership when something isn’t working and fixing it.
- Helping us protect what makes SOS special while continually finding ways to make it better.
WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR
You’ll already have management experience in retail, hospitality, speciality coffee, surf, outdoor lifestyle or another customer-focused business.
But experience alone isn’t enough.
We’re looking for personality, judgement and drive.
You should be:
- Passionate about surfing, the ocean and the culture surrounding it.
- Genuinely interested in great coffee and the experience that surrounds it.
- An experienced and confident people manager.
- Commercially aware and comfortable working with sales, margins, staffing and targets.
- Creative and full of ideas, but equally good at turning ideas into action.
- Proactive. You notice things before someone has to point them out.
- Organised enough to run a tight operation without making the place feel corporate.
- Comfortable making decisions and taking responsibility for them.
- Warm, positive and good with people.
- Happy rolling your sleeves up when things get busy.
We aren’t looking for someone who simply keeps things ticking over.
We want someone who wants to build something.
WHAT YOU’LL BE JOINING
SOS is an independent business with ambitious plans and a strong identity.
We’ve built a place where someone can grab a coffee after a surf, discover a new board or brand, meet a friend, work for an hour, come to an event or simply hang around and talk about waves.
Community matters to us.
So does good design, good music, good product, good coffee and doing things properly.
We’re independent, which means good ideas don’t have to travel through six layers of management before something happens.
If it’s a great idea, we can do it.
THIS ROLE WILL SUIT YOU IF…
You get excited by the idea of having real influence over a growing independent business.
You like responsibility.
You have high standards.
You naturally look for ways to make things better.
And when you walk into a busy surf shop and coffee bar on a summer morning, you don’t see chaos.
You see possibility.
THE DETAILS
Role: General Manager
Location: SOS Surf, Westward Ho!, North Devon
Position: Full-time
Salary: Competitive, dependent on experience
Start date: To be agreed
If this sounds like the kind of place you’d like to put your energy, experience and ideas into, we’d love to hear from you.
Send us your CV along with a short introduction telling us about yourself, your experience, your relationship with surfing and coffee, and why SOS caught your attention.
SOS SURF
Westward Ho! | North Devon
[email protected]
WhatsApp 07892346130
Pay: £26,225.41-£45,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company pension
- Employee discount
- Store discount
Work Location: In person
