OVERVIEW
This role will manage the front of house areas of both the Corn Exchange and the Old Library, supporting the people that work in those spaces, ensuring there is a warm welcome, efficient and friendly service, and a high-quality offer for visitors, both public and visiting companies.
This role is responsible for all of the commercial and trading opportunities within the front of house areas, implementing new ideas and products which are both commercially considerate, environmentally friendly and enhance the organisation’s offer. This will include our café bar areas. You will have experience of hospitality, setting a vision for the service and menus, overseeing the delivery of your plans and ensuring staff in these areas are fully complaint with relevant legislation. You will contribute to the growth in use of the spaces, overseeing the hires programme and managing key local relationships.
This role will have budget management: you will oversee the income and expenditure across specific trading and visitor experience budget lines, setting targets and monitoring weekly sales and donation reports, working with the relevant teams and enabling and encouraging your team to meet monthly and annual targets.
As a management role, this role will have line management responsibility for key roles within the team as well as maintaining an oversight of the recruitment and induction of our casual and volunteers’ team.
You will regularly review communication and administration processes, supporting a cohesive and knowledgeable front of house team.
You will also work closely with other managers, to ensure collaborative planning and communication and be the voice in maintaining an excellent visitor journey and experience.
The successful candidate will have a naturally positive and motivating outlook, enjoy multi tasking and demonstrate calm and confident leadership. You will enjoy a fast-paced environment, finding positive solutions to improve trading sales and enhance the visitor experience, managing new and existing activity to grow audiences and revenue. Working for the Corn Exchange is varied and rewarding with no two days being the same. You will be someone who enjoys working with people and the general public and will have had experience of managing a large team. You will enjoy the challenge of creatively solving problems and thinking on your feet; perhaps looking to take the next step in your career.
Key Objectives
· Manage and support the team in the successful delivery of live performances and films, box office functions, hospitality, hire events, agency services, and other activity and enquiries from our visitors.
· Implement commercial revenue plans; including food and drink, artwork and retail merchandise, hire opportunities, events, amongst others.
· Ensure a welcoming first-class visitor experience, excellent customer service, responding to feedback and enhancing the visitor experience.
· Monitor sales and fundraising targets and manage trading budgets.
· Maintain good communications with other departments and maximise efficiency of systems to provide accurate and helpful information to staff, artists, visiting companies and the general public.
· To act as Duty Manager at the Corn Exchange and other venues as appropriate and occasionally other events outside of these venues.
Main Duties Sales
· To identify, plan, budget and deliver revenue opportunities, increasing income and spend per head.
· To set and monitor targets for all trading activity and ensuring proposals for new ideas demonstrate indicators of success and a return on any investment.
· To contribute to setting programme sales targets and fundraising targets.
· To work closely with the marketing team to plan for and maximise marketing opportunities, seeking ongoing solutions to slower sales and ensuring visible promotion of activities across the front of house area.
· To communicate the plans, offer strategies and lead on motivating the front of house team to:
o increase spend per head for all audiences/visitors
o deliver the fundraising needs of the organisation - e.g. donation requests, bucket collections
o actively promote all services
o set personal and collective targets
o schedule timely points to review/report/take action on progress
· To proactively work to ensure repeat business, new business and successful events; building contacts increasing awareness of our services across local community and corporate networks.
· To work collaboratively with senior managers; and offer sales information to inform planning for increased visitors and improved experiences
· To support the implementation of appropriate selling techniques and training to ensure that every opportunity is taken to cross-sell, up-sell and make a donation request.
· To oversee coordination of a 'front of house service’ at other sales points, events or venues, as required.
· To oversee that our trading suppliers provide the best quality, variety and value and are selected to align with our green values.
Operations and finance
· To act as a key holder; ensuring the safety and security of the Corn Exchange buildings and able to respond to out of hours calls
· To work with the Operations Manager to uphold and enforce the relevant terms of the Premises License and ensure compliance with licensing/legal regulations.
· To produce system reports for management/executive teams and external customers.
· To ensure appropriate GDPR systems are in place and followed.
· To be able to support efficient use and resolution of issues of Spektrix and ticketing activity and Point One EPOS (training provided)
· To manage delegated budgets; forecasting income and expenditure, achieving the annual targets set by the Board and ensuring all levels of expenditure are tightly controlled.
· To work proactively with the finance team, on our accounts software, to provide required information to enable payments and completion of monthly accounts; ensure all trading activity is properly set up within financial processes; and ensure all financial settlements with third parties
· To ensure a customer orientated approach to all decision making and encourage shared responsibility across the team to find ways to better of doing things.
· To ensure a welcoming environment for artists, visiting companies and the general public, ensuring our spaces are attractive and appealing
· To preserve an outstanding visitor experience and consistent excellent standards of customer service, including recording customer feedback and timely responses to customer enquiries and complaints.
Management
· To line manage key roles within the Front of House teams, giving appropriate feedback, setting SMART targets and identifying areas for support.
· To support Front of House Supervisors in line managing the Front of House Assistants.
· To lead Front of House team meetings, focused on knowledge sharing and planning.
· To ensure clear and effective communication and administration systems are in place.
· To plan and rota for the department ensuring appropriate and efficient levels of staffing.
· To support recruitment, deliver induction programmes and enable training.
· To ensure a cohesive, confident and knowledgeable Front of House team of staff, casual staff and volunteers.
· To attend various organisation and management meetings as required.
Duty Management
· To open/unlock and close/secure the buildings and ensure the safety of all visitors and staff on duty.
· To ensure all areas front and rear of house are presentable, well maintained, clean and ready to open at the designated times; reporting or actioning maintenance/cleaning issues.
· To run front of house show arrangements for live shows and films, liaise with backstage/visiting company staff, manage flow of audiences and ensure a welcoming atmosphere for all.
· To brief and motivate the front of house staff and volunteer stewards.
· To provide organisational and customer support during access performances or for visitors with particular needs.
· To take responsibility for money handling, float counts, change orders, merchandise commission with visiting artists and settling of accounts with private/corporate hires.
· To lead in the evacuation of the building and be Appointed First Aider as necessary.
General Duties/Additional Requirements
· To demonstrate a commitment to the Corn Exchange Trust's core values
· To support the implementation of the Trust's access, wellbeing and equity and inclusion programmes
· To publicly represent the Corn Exchange Trust in a prepared and professional manner, and to maintain confidentiality as appropriate
· To work evenings and weekends as necessary
· To undertake any other duties which may reasonably be requested
Please note that this is a guide to the nature of the work required. It is not wholly comprehensive or restrictive and may be reviewed with the post holder and the line manager from time to time.
Person Specification
The ideal candidate will:
· Have an entrepreneurial attitude
· Have experience in increasing commercial revenue and managing budgets and targets
· Have experience of managing a team
· Have strong organisation and time management abilities
· Be proactive and enjoy a fast-paced role
· Experience in hospitality and/ or customer facing roles.
Additional Benefits
· 20% discount in café and bar
· Free theatre, film and exhibition tickets for the Corn Exchange & The Base
· Free access to our small car park
· A day off for your birthday
· A day off for Wellbeing activity
We offer training to our staff members to help them develop and progress and have a strong focus on wellbeing within the organisation.
There is the opportunity to join one of our staff working groups - Environmental Action, Equity & Inclusion, Fundraising and Wellbeing - and you will be invited to experience sharing’s of new shows in development.
AI in Applications
We recognise that candidates may choose to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support the preparation of their job applications. When used appropriately, AI can be a helpful aid in structuring responses, checking clarity, and improving presentation.
However, applications must reflect your own skills, experience and understanding. If an application appears to rely excessively on AI-generated content, it may not meet the required standard and could be rejected.
We encourage all applicants to ensure their submissions are authentic, tailored to the role, and clearly demonstrate their own knowledge, experience and suitability.
The deadline for applications is midday on Wednesday 9th September 2026. Applications will not be considered without a cover letter. Previous applicants need not apply.
For details on how to apply please visit our website at www.cornexchangenew.com/vacancies
Pay: £30,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company pension
- Discounted or free food
- Free parking
- On-site parking
Work Location: In person
