About the Role
Kaiten Japanese Dining and Hospitality UK Ltd is looking for an experienced, detail-focused and standards-driven Food Compliance and Standards Manager to lead food safety, quality assurance and compliance activities across restaurant operations.
The successful candidate will take ownership of food-safety systems, internal standards, hygiene controls, allergen management, supplier compliance and audit readiness. You will work closely with kitchen teams, restaurant management, procurement, training staff and external partners to ensure that food preparation, storage, service and operational practices consistently meet required standards.
This role is suitable for an experienced food safety or quality professional who has worked in hospitality, catering, food manufacturing or another regulated food environment and is ready to lead compliance activity at management level.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead food safety and compliance standards across restaurant operations
- Maintain and continuously improve the food safety management system
- Oversee HACCP-based controls and monitoring procedures
- Review food-safety policies and operating standards
- Ensure procedures remain current and consistently applied
- Lead internal food-safety and hygiene audits
- Develop annual compliance and audit schedules
- Review audit findings and required corrective actions
- Monitor completion of corrective and preventive actions
- Investigate recurring food-safety and quality issues
- Lead root-cause analysis where appropriate
- Maintain compliance registers and supporting documentation
- Oversee food temperature-monitoring requirements
- Review refrigeration, freezing and hot-holding controls
- Monitor preparation and storage of high-risk foods
- Oversee safe handling of fish, seafood and raw ingredients
- Review sushi preparation and display controls
- Monitor buffet and conveyor-belt food safety practices
- Ensure adequate controls are in place for time-sensitive food items
- Oversee allergen-management systems
- Maintain accurate allergen information for menu items
- Review ingredient and supplier changes for allergen impact
- Ensure allergen procedures are understood by restaurant teams
- Support staff handling customer allergen enquiries
- Oversee labelling, date coding and stock-rotation standards
- Monitor raw and ready-to-eat food separation
- Review cleaning and sanitation programmes
- Verify appropriate cleaning schedules are completed
- Monitor personal hygiene and food-handler standards
- Support pest-control and environmental hygiene programmes
- Review product-traceability procedures
- Coordinate mock recall and withdrawal exercises
- Lead response activity for significant food-quality concerns
- Support product recall or withdrawal processes where required
- Manage supplier-quality and compliance reviews
- Review supplier documentation and specifications
- Monitor approved-supplier status
- Escalate significant supplier quality concerns
- Work with procurement teams on supplier improvement actions
- Review incoming food-quality issues
- Monitor food complaints and recurring customer concerns
- Analyse complaint trends
- Prepare quality and compliance reports for management
- Develop compliance KPIs and performance measures
- Present findings and risks to senior stakeholders
- Coordinate food-safety and quality training
- Ensure mandatory compliance training is completed
- Support onboarding of kitchen and restaurant staff
- Prepare teams for external inspections
- Coordinate responses to environmental-health visits
- Maintain continuous improvement across food-compliance processes
Leadership and Management Responsibilities
- Provide direction on food safety and quality standards
- Guide restaurant teams on compliance requirements
- Lead food-safety improvement initiatives
- Assign and monitor compliance actions
- Review performance against food-safety KPIs
- Coach supervisors and coordinators on quality expectations
- Support development of food-safety competence across teams
- Lead compliance review meetings
- Escalate significant food-safety risks to senior management
- Coordinate cross-functional quality initiatives
- Promote a strong culture of food safety and accountability
- Support recruitment and onboarding for quality-related roles
- Maintain clear accountability for corrective actions
- Encourage consistent application of standards across operations
Qualifications and Experience
- Degree, diploma or professional qualification in Food Safety, Food Science, Hospitality, Catering, Quality Management or a related subject
- At least four years of experience in food safety, quality assurance, hospitality compliance or food operations
- Strong practical knowledge of HACCP principles
- Experience leading internal audits
- Strong understanding of food hygiene and contamination controls
- Experience managing allergen procedures
- Knowledge of temperature-control requirements
- Experience reviewing supplier-quality documentation
- Understanding of corrective and preventive action processes
- Strong root-cause analysis skills
- Experience supporting external inspections
- Ability to interpret food-safety requirements and translate them into practical procedures
- Strong documentation and record-management skills
- Excellent attention to detail
- Strong analytical and problem-solving ability
- Confidence working with operational managers and kitchen teams
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to deliver training and explain compliance requirements clearly
- Strong organisational and time-management skills
- Ability to manage multiple compliance activities simultaneously
- Right to work in the United Kingdom
Pay: £34,000.00-£48,000.00 per year
Work Location: In person
