Full Time

Thank you for your interest in the post of Commercial Manager for the Urquhart Castle District with Historic Environment Scotland. Your base location is Urquhart Castle, with some travel across the Region and, on occasion, to other locations in Scotland. This is a permanent and pensionable appointment.

You’ll lead all our visitor operations team at Urquhart Castle, running a successful operation that delivers an outstanding service to visitors and local communities. You’ll lead a team of customer service colleagues, creating an empowering culture that inspires innovation, collaboration and continuous improvement.

Scottish Canals is looking for a Destination Supervisor for The Caledonian Canal Centre in Fort Augustus. The Destination Supervisor will have responsibility for operation of the visitor centre and the successful candidate will manage all employees to ensure the smooth running of the catering delivery and service, rooms and retail areas.

You will set the standard and ensure staff exceed visitor expectations at all times. Customer care is of primary importance. You will manage and influence the visitor journey from first engagement until they leave, satisfied with their experience. 

Training, mentoring and leading front of house staff to create a visitor experience team who greet, engage, enthuse, excite and inform all visitors and who “go the extra mile” to make a visit to the Caledonian Canal Centre the best it should be.

As well as a competitive salary, Scottish Canals also offers a generous annual leave entitlement of 34 days rising to 39 after 5 years (inc. public holidays), along with enhanced company sick pay, discounted shopping vouchers, and a contributory pension scheme with up to a 10% employer contribution.

The Destination Supervisor be responsible for:

•             Line management of Destination Assistants and Housekeepers
•             Destination Promotion across a variety of social media and local platforms
•             Daily finance and banking admin
•             Food hygiene compliance and labelling
•             Raising purchase orders, checking invoices/profit margins, implementing pricing changes
•             Ordering of stock & stock taking/recording and management of supplier relationships
•             Creating/maintaining/updating staff rota and cleaning schedules
•             Annualised hours administration
•             Responsibility for legal records for alcohol sales/temperature checks/VAT coding
•             Responsible for setting up of customer-facing displays
•             Meeting reps and agreeing prices for suppliers
•             Costing – ensure appropriate gross profit for all items sold
•             Waste documentation & control
•             Basic marketing and promotions
•             Ordering and compliance of staff uniforms/PPE

Skills/Experience Required:

•             Line management experience
•             Great leadership qualities
•             Social Media experience
•             Experience of working within a high-quality, hospitality environment
•             A confident, friendly, welcoming, helpful, engaging nature
•             Flexible approach to the role
•             Ability to co-operate with and support colleagues
•             Use of initiative in applying and maintaining high levels of customer service
•             Keeping brand standards at highest level
•             Strong communication skills
•             Computer literate
•             Keen to work across various disciplines
•             Good time management and organisational skills

JOB PURPOSE

To ensure that the garden, grounds and related policies of Culzean Castle are managed and maintained as a nationally-recognized garden of outstanding historical and horticultural importance; contributing to the property’s overall conservation and development, and its enjoyment by visitors and supporters.

The role of ‘Gardener’ as a key member of the Culzean team will be heavily involved in the development plans of the garden and wider designed landscape.

CONTEXT

Culzean Castle & Country Park:
The National Trust for Scotland’s (the Trust’s) property at Culzean is located on the Ayrshire coast of the Firth of Clyde, some 19 kilometers south of Ayr. The estate has been in existence since the 16th century and comprises the former seat of the Kennedy family – Culzean Castle – together with the core 228 hectares of Cassillis and Culzean Estate. The 5th Marquess of Ailsa, with the Trustees of the 4th Marquess, gave the Castle, some of its contents and the designed landscape to the Trust in 1945. Culzean became Scotland’s first Country Park in 1969 under the Countryside (Scotland) Act and is managed by the Trust. The centerpiece of the property is Culzean Castle, acknowledged as Robert Adam’s masterpiece in the Romantic Castellated style, matched by its sublime cliff top site. The designed landscape contains a rich variety of features, including some by Adam, such as the Viaduct and the Home Farm, to complement his design for the Castle, and is important also for its gardens, policy woodland plantings and natural heritage.

The Castle and Country Park is the most significant property in the ownership of the Trust in terms of scale of business, investment and profile and is currently undergoing an extensive period of investment and development to establish it as one of Scotland’s leading heritage visitor attractions.

Culzean Castle Garden:
The gardens and designed landscape at Culzean have been independently assessed as being of outstanding significance. They feature at the highest level across all categories in the benchmark Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland managed by Historic Scotland – one of only 5 sites in Scotland to do so.

The extensive formal lawns of the Fountain Court, the planted south-facing Terraces and the Orangery are focal points for visitors crossing the Viaduct to the Castle and feature frequently in photographs of the property. The Walled Garden – which lies to the south-west of the Castle – is double in construction. Its northern half is managed as a production walled garden with soft and top fruit, vegetables and cut-flowers as well as extensive herbaceous borders; it is in the process of redevelopment with an emphasis in increasing the range of production an enhanced visitor experience. The South Walled Garden contains impressive fruit ranges (Peach House and recreated Vinery) but otherwise is more ornamental; the display here is also undergoing redevelopment and extension. A woodland garden called Happy Valley extends behind the walled garden and contains a number of built features relating to the productive history of the landscape as well as specimen trees, rhododendrons and a selection of exotic woody plants. The garden team also maintains a number of other small amenity plantings throughout the park as well as holiday cottage gardens and other public areas.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

The Key Purposes of the job will be met by:
1. Undertaking practical maintenance of the garden (e.g. managing trees and shrubs, herbaceous plants, and bulbs; turf care; pest/disease/weed control; staking, plant nutrition, composting and soil improvement to the required standards expected by the Trust and for the maximum safety of, and enjoyment by visitors including other professionals in the horticultural industry;
2. Fostering positive relationships with local communities and organisations and promote the work of the Trust.
3. On occasion, supervising and working with volunteers and/or staff members to ensure they deliver required outputs at the appropriate standard, and gain benefit/satisfaction from their activities;
4. Demonstrating self-motivation, organizing, planning, and prioritizing and good time management;
5. Undertaking such other reasonable duties as may from time to time be required to ensure the smooth running of the property as required by the Head Gardener.
6. Ensuring compliance with the Trust’s health, safety, and environment policies and procedures.

The current duties of this job do require a criminal records (Disclosure Scotland) check to be carried out.

JOB PURPOSE

This is a fantastic opportunity to work as part of our leadership team at the iconic Glencoe National Nature Reserve and its Visitor Centre, which attracts hundreds of thousands of people from across the globe every year.

You will be responsible for the day-to-day catering operations at our popular Highland Coo Cafe. You will deliver our quality standards and performance targets, ensuring we offer customers a fantastic Food & Beverage experience.
You will be an enthusiastic team player who can lead by example to supervise, coach and motivate your team. You will also be part of a broader duty management team responsible for promoting good communication across the site and a joined-up visitor services provision.
As a charity, every penny we raise goes back into the National Trust for Scotland’s conservation work, caring for this special place.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

Catering operation
• Contribute to menu development, preparation, cooking and presentation of a high quality food and drink offer.
• Ensure compliance with health and safety, food hygiene and environmental health standards and appropriate record-keeping
• Accountable for cost-effective stock management, ordering, storage and wastage control.
Visitor experience
• Offer excellent customer service and ensure all members of the catering team do the same.
• Support property-wide targets for completion of visitor surveys to understand more about our visitors.
• Act as one of our duty manager team, responsible for ensuring a safe and smooth visitor operation, addressing issues, and opening/closing up the visitor centre.

People management
• Supervise the activities of a team of permanent and seasonal Visitor Service Assistants (VSAs), kitchen porters and cooks, achieving excellent staff performance and motivation through effective induction, training, task-setting and coaching on front and back-of-house routines.
• Prepare catering rotas and holiday allocation to meet business needs.
• Work closely with specialist advisory colleagues, i.e. our Trust-wide Catering Development Manager.

Finance Management
• Share responsibility for achieving an F&B budget of around £450,000 a year.
• Monitor commercial performance and adjust activities to capitalize on sales opportunities and run a cost-effective catering operation.
• Supervise daily café till operations and perform end-of-day income reconciliation as a duty manager.
• Assist the Catering Manager with menu costing, ordering and stock-taking.

Performance indicators and targets
• Weekly, monthly and annual sales and cost of sales targets
• Food compliance standards and record-keeping
• Visitor enjoyment reviews and ratings from visitor surveys and visitor feedback
• Staff satisfaction from staff surveys

Tools / equipment / systems
• Access to desktop PC and relevant online people management, training, financial monitoring and stock ordering systems, including NTS intranet and Microsoft 365.
• EPOS tills and chip and pin machines
• Fully equipped commercial catering kitchen

JOB PURPOSE

This role exists to ensure a best-in-class visitor experience that compliments the unique nature of one of Scotland’s most spectacular natural features, significant for its natural beauty, geology, SSI, NNR, and Gaelic culture leading all staff to contribute fully to the operations overall commercial and conservation success.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Create a culture of ‘exceptional service, every time’, delivering high standards of customer experience and a consistently warm welcome to everyone.
• Motivation of all Staff and volunteers through exceptional recruitment, induction, development, motivation, and performance management to such a level that they are fully equipped and motivated to undertake their duties to the required Trust standards and that staffing budgets are adhered to
• Responsible for the catering, car parking and travel trade income departments to achieve their financial targets, maximizing income and profitability, using the Trust’s procedures and instructions. You will strive to be efficient and ensure cost effectiveness in all the work you do.
• Ensure high standards of presentation across the site You may have delegated tasks within other departments, and you will understand and help deliver the overall property business plan.
• Instill a Health & Safety culture across the property, ensuring the teamwork within the property’s ‘Safe System of Work’ to reduce risk of incidents and accidents to volunteers, employees and visitors.
• Ensure that all compliance KPI’s are delivered
• Responsible for purchase order control, raising and discrepancies
• Taking responsibility for opening and closing and security of buildings as well as emergency procedure implementation, duty management, providing relief cover as required and responding to out of hours duty manager call outs.
• Collaborate successfully with VSS estate Corrieshalloch/Inverewe, VSM’s Inverewe, VSM maintenance Inverewe and Inverewe Administrator to ensure successful multi site operational cross party working
• Collaborate successfully with VSS estate and site rangers to achieve Corrieshallochs NNR and SSSI objectives along with the NTS plan for nature strategy
• To ensure the successful running of all the other customer touch points of path networks, bridges and viewing platform.
• Demonstrating and ensuring high standards of presentation across the property. You may have delegated tasks within other departments, and you will understand and help deliver the overall property business plan.
• This role is one for which the duties/responsibilities/accountabilities of the role require you to become a member of the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme, which replaces the ‘Enhanced Disclosure’ check and is administered by Disclosure Scotland.
• Manage as required in conjunction with other VSM’s based at Inverewe and Corrieshalloch VSS/ranger on site all formal and informal learning programmes across the operation, developing and delivering curriculum linked learning programmes for schools to include both indoor and outdoor learning.
• Assist the operations manager with the recruitment, training, and performance of all Corrieshalloch ambassadors and other volunteer roles as and when the need arises.
• Work closely with other VSM’s based at Inverewe to design and deliver a programme of visitor events, which increase visitor numbers, drive secondary spend and support overall operation targets.
• As business dictates you may be asked to work at Inverewe Garden in a VSM capacity

CONTEXT

The Food & Beverage Manager is responsible for the full catering operation within Brodie Castle & Estate. This is currently 2 distinct catering outlets, one located in the Castle serving a traditional café menu, with c50 covers indoor seating and c60 covers of outside seating. The other catering outlet is located within Playful Garden with a distinct family aimed, sweet treats offer. This outlet has c60 covers indoor and currently c30 outside covers, although this has potential to be much larger. There are also 2 mobile catering units on site, these provide catering for larger events and again have potential for further use. The Catering Manager will be expected to develop the offers of all outlets to best suit the audience, maximise income potential and visitor experience within these settings. The Estate also hosts corporate events and weddings and contains 4 holiday cottages. The role can develop offers around these areas to further deliver income and experience.

Brodie Castle is set within a 75 acre “policies” estate, it is the ancestral home of the Brodies of Brodie and consists of a number of listed buildings including the main 16th century Z plan Castle, stables, walled garden, gate houses and gardeners bothy, as well as a number of estate houses currently used as holiday lets. The Castle consists of dressed rooms used as a guided tour visitor experience and houses a collection worth over £6m. Within the Castle is the main catering outlet and retail facility as well as housing the main estate offices. There is also the Lairds wing, a luxury 7-bedroom holiday let within the Castle.

The wider estate consists of a nationally significant designed landscape with Victorian Shrubbery, tree lined avenues, commercial forestry, agricultural land, and mature mixed woodlands surrounding a manmade lake. Within the old walled garden is a Playful Garden, consisting of imaginative play area, formal gardens, and the national daffodil collection.

KEY PURPOSE

The purpose of the role is to support the conservation of Brodie Castle & Estate by generating income through food and beverage operations whilst delivering the highest standard of visitor experience for all visitors and guests. This will be achieved by maintaining the highest standards of conservation and adhering to regional and national strategies, policies, and procedures.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Visitor Catering Experience
• Overall responsibility for the management and delivery of the catering facilities at Brodie Castle & Estate. This includes, but is not limited to, the Castle Café, Playful Garden Pavilion and 2 mobile catering units.
• Ensuring innovative ideas and current trends in catering are constantly being delivered in all outlets on site
• Setting objectives and being responsible for the overall, day-to-day running of the catering operations
• Leading and managing a team of staff; managing performance, recognising training needs and potential as appropriate
• Managing budgets – ensuring that, as a minimum, the financial targets agreed with, in line with the budget are met
• Devising, costing and sourcing menu items and consistently looking at ways of maximising income through effective purchasing and creative merchandising
• Adhering to the sale of alcohol legislation, being a Premises Manager
• Regularly monitoring customer feedback, Mystery Visitor and Visit Scotland Audits and develop suitable action plans based on the results
• Being visitor/customer focused by being visible, approachable, and quick to exceed expectations in fulfilling customer needs

Health & Safety, Food Safety, the Environment
• Ensuring that the operation meets statutory requirements of Health and Safety, Food Safety and Environmental legislations and procedures
• Conducting Food Safety and Health and Safety Risk Assessments and ensuring that all standards and procedures with regards to Hygiene and Safety are established and
• Recording and reporting all accidents within the location, adhering to location and company procedures
• Ensuring all equipment is well maintained and is in good working order
• Making recommendations for renewal and replacement of equipment when required.
• Establishing and maintaining location cleaning schedules
• Ensuring that all Trust procedures and work instructions are fully understood and practiced by all employees
• Promoting and encouraging environmental improvement initiatives as appropriate within the business

JOB PURPOSE
To assist the Head Chef in the day to day management of the food services to ensure that all targets are met and all visitors receive the highest level of visitor experience standards.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES
• Assist the Head Chef with the development of the Menu Cycle/Specification
• Contribute to food production as per the Menu Cycle/Specification and event Food Production (corporate, hospitality, meetings etc)
• Keeping up to date HACCP, COSHH checklists and temperature sheets.
• Ensure high Standards of Kitchen Hygiene, Cleanliness, Tidiness and related Schedules
• Use fresh Produce and Ingredients whenever and wherever is possible and minimise wastage.
• Maintain a high standard of Food Presentation to the Customer
• Share in the common responsibility of implementing the Trust’s “Health & Safety Policy”, being mindful at all times of the health and safety of self, staff, volunteers, and visitors.
• Share in the common responsibility of working in a manner mindful of the Trust’s obligations to minimise impact on the environment, through e.g. efficient use of water/heat/light, recycling and the disposal of waste, considered use of transport
• Help to reduce occurrences where Health or Safety of yourself and other employees may be put in jeopardy
• Adherence to the COSHH Training provided and control of substances covered by COSHH
• Involvement in the upkeep and maintenance of both the entire department site and, specifically, the Catering Outlets
• Involvement in assessing and preserving the safety of utensils and equipment used within the Catering Outlets

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, EXPERIENCE & KNOWLEDGE
Qualifications
• Intermediate Food Hygiene Certificate
• Preferably a recognised formal qualification in culinary arts

Skills, experience & knowledge
Essential
The above outlines the key skills the job holder will need to possess and exercise. In addition, either knowledge of or experience in the following is required:
• Highly developed organisational skills, deployable in a multi-tasking environment;
• Excellent communication skills (written and oral), including influencing/persuasion;
• Ability to work as part of a team and the ability to foster and motivate a team;
• An understanding and commitment to the aims and objectives of the National Trust for Scotland.
• Living the values of the National Trust for Scotland and encourage colleagues to do the same
o The ability and willingness to understand others’ perspectives and to consider the impact of your actions on them and to adapt your actions as necessary.
o The ability and willingness to learn and try new things, to be flexible and step outside of your comfort zone.
o An open and honest way of communicating, ready to ask others for their ideas and to be open to hear and consider different points of view.
o A pro-active approach to taking initiative and to driving forward ideas and projects designed to improve daily operations and deliver an exceptional visitor experience.
The normal day-to-day duties of this role are such that a criminal record check or membership of the PVG scheme is not required.

You will be responsible for the operational delivery of the café, ice cream, retail and visitor services at Gladstone’s Land. Delivering performance standards and targets to ensure enjoyment of the property by visitors and members is maximised and key commercial, financial and development objectives are achieved to make the property fully sustainable. You will be part of a broader management team responsible for delivering an overall visitor service strategy, promoting good communication across the site and a joined-up service provision.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES
Supervising/undertaking the day-to-day operation of the property and environs to ensure an excellent customer/visitor experience. This includes supervision of:
• Responsibility for the supervision and delivery of the catering facilities at Gladstone’s Land.
• Being visitor/customer focused by being visible, approachable, and quick to exceed expectations in fulfilling customer needs.
• Line management of Visitor Services Assistants and volunteers
• Duty management and oversight/maintenance of the property
• Recording and reporting all accidents within the location, adhering to location and company procedures
• Ensuring all equipment is well maintained and is in good working order
• Maintaining location cleaning schedules
• Adhering to the sale of alcohol legislation
• Retail, Ticketing & Membership sales (to targets) and general customer service (individuals, education visits, other groups);
• Security of the Property;
• Ensuring Apartements are up to our standards.
• Health & Safety procedures, emergency procedures, and environmental procedures;
• Deputising for the Visitor Services Manager / Operations Manager on-site and off-site as required

Responsible for day to day financial administration at the property, including
• Ensuring the completion of Cash/till reconciliation;
• Week-end reports and reconciliation;
• Completion of the banking and all cash handling processes

Supporting the Visitor Services / Operations Manager with
• recruitment; induction; development; and management of all visitor services employees and volunteers such that they understand and are equipped to fulfill their roles to the standards required and that they feel valued, respected and supported.