General Manager
Ready to lead your own café without the late nights of traditional hospitality?
We are looking for a confident, hands-on General Manager to lead our Stokes Coffee and Kitchen in Newark-on-Trent, working 37.5 hours a week.
This is an opportunity to take full ownership of a seven-day, food-led café while becoming part of an iconic Lincolnshire brand built on quality, great service and good coffee, done right.
The café has both front-of-house and kitchen operations, so we need someone who understands the whole customer journey, from the welcome and coffee to the quality and presentation of the food leaving the kitchen.
You may already be managing a café or hospitality venue, or you may be an experienced senior manager who is ready to take full responsibility for your own site. Either way, you must be confident leading a team, maintaining standards and making decisions independently.
Who We Are
Stokes Coffee and Tea has over 120 years of passion and know-how in sourcing, roasting and blending its tea and coffee, supplying businesses locally and across the UK with exceptional quality. We operate three destination cafés. Each café offers a unique ambience, fresh, quality produce and of course the best coffee, which we roast on site, at The Lawn in Lincoln and Stokes Coffee and Kitchen in Newark. Alongside this, our sister companies, The Blue Room and Charlotte House Hotel at the Lawn in Lincoln, offer beautiful event spaces to suit every visitor and occasion. Via our wholesale team, we also offer a comprehensive technical support package, as well as our coffee, to other cafes, so there are plenty of career opportunities to explore.
At Stokes we are passionate about our people, customers and communities and are constantly evolving to meet the challenges of a changing world, ethically, sustainably and responsibly. We have recently become a BCorp Certified business. This is a global marker, verifying we meet rigorous standards for social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. We want to partner and grow with our team members by offering a supportive work environment that provides better work-life balance, a learning culture to enhance skills, share knowledge and develop your career, as well as offer fair reward. Our management pathway is open to all team members who consistently demonstrate Stokes’ behaviours and values.
We hope you'll join us on the next exciting chapter in our journey and become part of the family.
What you’ll be doing
As General Manager, you will be the positive driving force behind the café and its team. You will take ownership of the day-to-day operation and ensure the café consistently delivers the food, coffee, service and standards Stokes is known for.
Your responsibilities will include:
- Leading, supporting and developing the front-of-house and kitchen teams
- Being present and operational during service
- Creating rotas and managing labour effectively
- Maintaining consistently high food, drink and service standards
- Overseeing ordering, stock control and monthly stocktakes
- Managing holidays, attendance and day-to-day people matters
- Recruiting and onboarding new team members when required
- Responding to customer feedback and resolving concerns effectively
- Maintaining food safety, health and safety and company compliance
- Working with KPIs and targets to improve café performance
- Identifying opportunities to grow sales and strengthen the customer experience
- Working closely with the wider Stokes management and support teams
The role is supported by our multi-site and central teams, including wider forecasting and business planning support. However, you will be expected to take clear ownership of your café and confidently manage its day-to-day performance.
What we’re looking for
We’re looking for someone who:
- Has management experience within a café or food-led hospitality business
- Is ready and able to take full responsibility for a site
- Is a confident people leader who can coach, support and hold others accountable
- Leads by example and is happy to work operationally alongside the team
- Understands both front-of-house service and kitchen operations
- Is comfortable managing rotas, labour, orders, stock and operational targets
- Can respond calmly and confidently to customer and team challenges
- Has high standards and notices the details that shape a customer’s experience
- Uses initiative and solves problems without needing constant direction
- Communicates openly and works collaboratively with the wider management team
- Is flexible across the week and available for regular weekend working
You don’t need decades of General Manager experience, but you must have enough management experience to independently lead the café, make sound decisions and take ownership of its people, standards and performance.
What we offer
- £30,000–£32,000 per year, depending on experience
- A genuine 37.5-hour contract over five days
- Predominantly daytime working
- Quarterly performance bonus
- Enhanced annual leave entitlement
- Christmas Day and Boxing Day off
- Free food and drinks while at work
- Reward and recognition schemes
- Training and development, including our Management Pathway
- Employee Assistance Programme
- Health and wellbeing programme
- High-street and in-store discounts
- Staff social events
- Free parking space
- Supportive team environment
- Workplace pension
- Cycle-to-work scheme
- Bereavement leave
How to apply
Please send an up-to-date and relevant CV, along with a statement setting out what you bring to this role. If you want an informal conversation about the role, please message 07790613916 to arrange a call. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you can send 1 minute video to [email protected].
We are fortunate to have hugely positive responses to our campaigns, and whilst we try to reply to all our lovely candidates, if you have not been contacted within two weeks, your application has unfortunately not been progressed.
Stokes values a diverse and inclusive workforce and resolutely believes that this can bring fresh ideas, thinking and approaches to the way we work and better serve our customers, partners and employees. We welcome everyone from everywhere to come and join our team. Please let us know if we can support you in any specific ways to apply to join us.
Pay: £30,000.00-£32,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company events
- Company pension
- Cycle to work scheme
- Discounted or free food
- Employee assistance programme
- Employee discount
- Health & wellbeing programme
- Store discount
Application question(s):
- Please outline any restrictions to your availability for interview and your notice period.
- Tell us what you want from your next role.
- Tell us why you believe you are the right person to lead Stokes Coffee and Kitchen in Newark?
- Briefly describe your experience managing both people and day-to day hospitality operations
Work Location: In person
