Hospitality and Catering

Visitor Operations Manager

Calanais Visitor Centre, Isle of Lewis

Salary: £36,085–£40,209 per annum (depending on experience)

Hours: Full-time – 40 hours per week (April–September), 35 hours per week (October–March)

About the Role

Following our £10.1 million redevelopment, the Calanais Visitor Centre is looking for an experienced and enthusiastic Visitor Operations Manager to lead our front-of-house operations.

This is an exciting opportunity to join an internationally significant heritage attraction, leading a team dedicated to delivering exceptional visitor experiences while supporting the Centre’s commercial success.

Key Responsibilities:

Lead, motivate and manage the visitor services team across admissions, retail and catering.

Oversee daily visitor operations, ensuring excellent customer service and a welcoming environment.

Manage staff rotas, training, performance and development.

Work towards agreed sales targets, budgets and operational KPIs.

Support retail and catering performance, identifying opportunities to increase sales and improve efficiency.

Ensure high standards of health, safety and operational compliance.

Support the General Manager with the overall management of the Centre.

About You

We are looking for someone with:

At least 3 years’ supervisory experience in hospitality, tourism, retail or customer services.

Proven experience in team leadership and staff management.

Strong commercial awareness and experience working towards sales targets and budgets.

Excellent communication, organisational and customer service skills.

A proactive, flexible approach and the ability to thrive in a busy visitor environment.

The role requires flexibility to work weekends and bank holidays.

What We Offer

A supportive and inclusive workplace, professional development opportunities and the chance to play a key role in the future of one of Scotland’s most important heritage attractions.

How to Apply

To view the full job description and apply, please visit:

https://calanais.zohorecruit.eu/jobs/Careers/75324000000878012/VISITOR-OPERATIONS-MANAGER?source=CareerSite

JOB PURPOSE

This is a fantastic opportunity to join our leadership team in the stunning Glencoe National Nature Reserve at our Visitor Centre, which welcomes hundreds of thousands of people from across the globe every year.

This is a chance to use your Food & Beverage expertise in a meaningful way. Our Visitor Services Supervisors play a pivotal role in creating exceptional visitor experiences and enabling our charity to generate the income that supports the conservation of this special place.

As one of two F&B Visitor Service Supervisors, you will be responsible for the smooth day-to-day catering operation at our busy Highland Coo Café, delivering our quality standards and performance targets, while ensuring we offer customers a memorable F&B experience.

You will lead by example, producing an enticing menu, recommending and upselling our range, and promoting complementary income-streams like retail, memberships and donations. You’ll also help answer visitors’ questions and share your enthusiasm for Glencoe’s stories, the work we do and what their money is funding.
You will be an enthusiastic team player who can supervise, coach and motivate your staff. You will also be part of a broader duty management team, promoting good communication across the site and a joined-up visitor services provision.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

Catering operation
• Contribute to menu development ensuring our café offering is appealing, profitable and sustainable.
• Lead with preparation, cooking, training and presentation of a high-quality food and drink offer.
• Ensure compliance with health and safety, food hygiene, food allergens, licensing and environmental health standards, completing all related 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, opening/closing the visitor centre, addressing issues and emergency procedure and providing relief cover, as required.

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

Finance Management
• Share responsibility for achieving an F&B budget of over £1,000,000 per annum.
• Monitor commercial performance and adjust activities to capitalize on sales opportunities and run a cost-effective profitable F&B operation.
• Supervise daily café till operations and perform end-of-day income reconciliation as a duty manager.
• Assist the F&B Manager with menu costing and stock-taking.

JOB PURPOSE

To supervise the pastry department including overseeing staff, aiding with menu preparation, ensuring food quality and freshness, and monitoring ordering and stock levels. Prepare a variety of desserts, pastries, or other sweet goods and will play a key role in the running of the kitchen by creating and maintaining high standards of quality in both co-operative teamwork and dishes.

Support the Head Chef to deliver standards and efficient delivery of food preparation and operation within the tea rooms, private dining and event spaces of the kitchen at The Mackintosh Tearooms creating, preparing and delivering menus to the highest standard whilst maintaining a safe & hygienic catering environment in accordance with health and safety policies and standards. The Pastry Chef will report to the Head Chef and work closely with the VSM F&B at the Mackintosh Tearooms.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Supervise pastry team
• Ensure that the required standards are adhered to in the production and preparation of food
• Ensure all complaints, requirements and suggestions by customers are attended to accordingly
• Give appropriate support or guidance to members of pastry team when the need arises and escalate to the Head Chef when appropriate
• Ensure all dishes are prepared and finished to required specification
• Monitor the quality and quantity of food prepared
• Manage HACCP as required
• Prepare a wide variety of goods such as cakes, scones etc. following traditional and modern recipes
• Ensuring the presentation of products produced will be beautiful and exciting
• Monitor stocks for baking ingredients such as flour, sugar etc. and make appropriate orders within budget
• Check quality of material and condition of equipment and devices used for cooking
• Guide and motivate pastry assistants and pastry chefs to work more efficiently
• Support recruitment and training
• Maintain a lean and orderly cooking station and adhere to health and safety standards