General Manager – Midgar Coffee, Ipswich
£32,000–£34,000 per year + performance bonus
Full-time | 40 hours per week | Ipswich
Expected start date: October 2026
Midgar Coffee is coming to Ipswich, and we’re looking for someone pretty special to lead it.
We’re an independent, family-owned coffee house that started in Bury St Edmunds four years ago. Since then, we’ve built a brilliant team, a very loyal group of regulars and a reputation for great coffee, great food and genuinely friendly service.
This October, we’re taking a big step and opening our second Midgar in Ipswich.
We’re looking for an experienced General Manager who wants to do more than simply run shifts. You’ll be helping us open the doors, build the team, set the standards and make our new café feel like Midgar from day one.
This is a hands-on role. We don’t expect our GM to disappear into an office. You’ll know your regulars, work alongside your team, be visible on the floor and take real pride in the café you’re running.
What the role looks like
You’ll have overall responsibility for the day-to-day running of Midgar Ipswich, working closely with Stuart, Midgar’s Managing Director, and the wider management team.
You’ll be responsible for:
- Building, training and developing a great team
- Creating a positive culture where people enjoy coming to work and know what’s expected of them
- Making sure every guest receives the warm, relaxed and genuinely friendly service Midgar is known for
- Keeping standards consistently high across coffee, food, cleanliness and presentation
- Leading from the floor and supporting the team during busy services
- Managing rotas and making sure we have the right people in the right place at the right time
- Understanding the numbers and running a commercially healthy café, including sales, wages, stock, waste and average spend
- Ordering stock and keeping on top of availability without unnecessary waste
- Making sure food safety, health & safety and all operational standards are properly maintained
- Getting to know our customers and becoming part of the local Ipswich community
- Looking for ways to grow the café and make it better, rather than simply keeping things ticking over
You’ll have plenty of support, but you’ll also have genuine ownership of your site. We want someone who will care about it as if it were their own.
Who we’re looking for
You don’t need to come from a huge coffee chain.
What matters most to us is that you’re a strong hospitality leader who genuinely enjoys looking after people.
You’ll ideally have:
- Previous management experience in cafés, restaurants, hospitality or a similar customer-facing environment
- Experience leading, coaching and developing a team
- Confidence having difficult conversations when needed and holding people accountable
- A good understanding of labour, stock, waste and the commercial side of running a busy hospitality business
- High standards and an eye for the little things
- A warm, approachable personality
- The ability to stay calm and organised when things get busy
- A genuine love of hospitality and making people feel welcome
- The confidence to take ownership and make decisions
Coffee experience would be a bonus, but it isn’t everything. We can teach coffee. Finding the right person to lead the team and look after our guests is much more important.
What we offer
- £32,000–£34,000 salary, depending on experience
- Performance-related bonus
- 40-hour working week
- Predominantly daytime hours
- Tips
- Staff food and drinks
- Employee discount
- Training and development
- Genuine autonomy over your site
- The chance to build your own team from the beginning
- The opportunity to help shape a brand-new Midgar
- The chance to grow with us as the business develops
A little more about Midgar
Midgar has always been about more than serving coffee.
We want our cafés to be places where people feel comfortable, where regulars are known by name, where dogs are welcome, where the team actually enjoys talking to customers and where great service still feels natural rather than scripted.
Our original Bury St Edmunds café has grown significantly over the last four years and has been recognised with a number of local awards, including Best Café at the Muddy Stilettos Suffolk & Cambridgeshire Awards 2026.
But we’re still an independent business.
You won’t be employee number 4,327. You’ll work directly with the people who own and run Midgar, your ideas will be listened to and you’ll have a genuine opportunity to influence how the business develops.
Ipswich is an exciting new chapter for us, and we want a GM who feels excited about building something with us.
If you’re looking for a role where you can put your own stamp on a café, build a brilliant team and genuinely feel part of the business, we’d love to hear from you.
Please apply with your CV and a short introduction telling us a little about yourself, your management experience and why you think Midgar could be the right fit for you.
Pay: £32,000.00-£34,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company events
- Company pension
- Discounted or free food
- Employee discount
- Store discount
Work Location: In person
