The Red Lion, Amblecote, Stourbridge
Full-time | Permanent
This isn't the biggest kitchen you'll ever work in. But it could be one of the most exciting opportunities to make a kitchen your own.
We're looking for an experienced, passionate and ambitious Kitchen Manager / Lead Chef to take ownership of the kitchen and food offering at The Red Lion in Amblecote.
The Red Lion is one of our most successful pubs and has become something of an institution in the local area. It's a busy, vibrant, predominantly wet-led community pub with a fantastic following, a brilliant late-night atmosphere and customers who travel from across the local area to visit us.
Now we want to give them another reason to come.
Great food.
Our kitchen isn't huge and neither is the team. This isn't a role managing a large brigade from behind the scenes.
You'll be hands-on, cooking for the majority of your shifts and leading a small kitchen team.
But what the role does offer is something we think is much more exciting:
The opportunity to put your own stamp on a kitchen and help us completely rethink where we take our food offering next.
The opportunity
Our current food offering is relatively simple, centred around burgers, wraps and sandwiches.
It's served us well, but we think our customers are ready for something new – and we know there's a significant opportunity to grow food sales at The Lion.
We're not going to pretend we have all the answers.
We think the right approach is to find our niche and run with it.
What that niche looks like is something we'd like the right person to help us decide.
There are opportunities to explore new markets, including breakfast, develop new menus, introduce specials and create food-led events and promotions.
You'll have significant creative freedom to develop ideas and shape the direction of the kitchen, working closely with our Operations Director and General Manager to turn the best ideas into reality.
We're looking for someone who sees a small kitchen and thinks about what can be achieved with it.
Someone who can create a focused, exciting and commercially successful food offer without needing a huge kitchen or a massive brigade behind them.
More than just cooking
While you'll be a hands-on chef and spend much of your working week in the kitchen, we're looking for someone who wants to take real ownership of the food side of the business.
You'll work closely with the General Manager to grow food sales and develop new reasons for customers to visit The Lion.
That could mean developing a new menu, exploring the breakfast market, creating seasonal specials, running your own food events or coming to us with an idea we haven't even thought of yet.
If you've got a great idea, we want to hear it.
Commercial awareness will also be an important part of the role. Experience managing food GP, margins, stock, wastage and purchasing would be a real advantage.
Ultimately, we want someone who understands that a successful kitchen needs to produce great food – but it also needs to be a successful business.
You'll take ownership of:
· Leading the day-to-day operation of our small kitchen
· Cooking and delivering consistently high-quality food
· Developing and evolving our menus and overall food offering
· Working with the Operations Director and General Manager to develop new ideas
· Actively helping to grow food sales and profitability
· Exploring new opportunities, including breakfast and food-led events
· Managing food GP, margins, stock, ordering and wastage
· Leading, training and developing the kitchen team
· Maintaining exceptional standards of kitchen cleanliness and organisation
· Taking responsibility for all kitchen compliance
· Managing food safety, allergen procedures and SFBB documentation
· Maintaining the highest possible food hygiene standards
Who we're looking for
You don't necessarily need to have spent years as a Head Chef running a huge kitchen.
Previous experience leading a kitchen would be desirable, but we'd also love to hear from ambitious Sous Chefs or experienced Chef de Parties who feel ready to step up and take ownership of their own kitchen.
What matters most is that you're a strong, experienced cook who is ready for more responsibility and excited by the opportunity to build something.
You'll need to be someone who:
· Is an experienced and confident chef
· Is happy being hands-on and cooking for the majority of their shifts
· Can lead and motivate a small kitchen team
· Has ideas and isn't afraid to bring them to the table
· Understands the importance of consistency and high standards
· Has a commercial mindset and understands that growing sales is part of the job
· Takes pride in running a clean, organised and compliant kitchen
· Understands food safety and allergen management
· Holds a Level 3 Food Hygiene qualification
· Wants the opportunity to put their own stamp on a food business
Above all, we're looking for someone with ambition.
Someone who looks at where our food offering is today and sees where it could go tomorrow.
A different approach to working in kitchens
At Furious Pub Company, we're trying to challenge some of the outdated expectations that still exist within hospitality.
We've all heard the stories of chefs and kitchen managers working 60 or 70-hour weeks just to keep their kitchens running.
We don't believe that should be considered normal.
Hospitality is demanding. There will be busy weekends, long days and occasions when everyone needs to roll their sleeves up.
But those should be the exception, not the expectation.
We believe that great kitchens are built around good planning, strong teams and sensible systems – not one person sacrificing their entire life to keep everything together.
Work-life balance matters to us.
We want someone who is ambitious about their career and passionate about food, but who also wants a life outside of the kitchen.
We're trying to break the mould a little.
And we're looking for people who want to help us do it.
Salary
We're keeping the salary open to discussion because we want to find the right person and build the package around their experience and what they can bring to the role.
If you help us build a more successful food business, we believe you should have the opportunity to share in that success.
Your future with Furious Pub Company
We're a young, energetic and ambitious independent pub company.
We don't believe in creating identical, corporate pubs. Each of our businesses has its own identity, its own customers and its own opportunities.
We want talented people who bring ideas to the table, take ownership and want to grow with us.
For the right person, this role is an opportunity to take a small kitchen in a hugely successful and busy pub and turn its food offering into something that people genuinely talk about.
The kitchen might be small.
The opportunity isn't.
Interested?
If you're an experienced chef looking for the opportunity to run your own kitchen, an ambitious Sous Chef ready to step up, or an experienced Chef de Partie who knows they're capable of more, we'd love to hear from you.
We're not looking for someone to simply come in and cook the same menu.
We're looking for someone who wants to help us reinvent it.
Bring us your ideas. Put your stamp on it. And help us give people another reason to come to The Lion.
Pay: £13.71-£14.71 per hour
Work Location: In person
