Operations Manager, Blank Street
More information about location
Coffee chain
Be an early applicant
Coffee chain
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
More information about location
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To become the defining food and beverage brands of our generation.
Role
Who you are
- 5+ years of leadership experience in hospitality, retail, or another fast-growing consumer business
- Experience leading multiple locations (3-10) and developing the managers who run them
- Your Skills:
- Passionate about hospitality: you love creating exceptional customer and employee experiences, and care about setting the bar high in every store you’ve managed
- Commercial thinker: you have strong operational and financial judgment. You read the data (P&L, KPI dashboards) and know what to do next
- People leader: you have developed managers in the past and are able to hire an A* team, coach, make decisions and lead through change
- Strategic planner: you know how to plan a quarter ahead and how to turn priorities into plans your GMs can act on
- Excellent communicator: you know how to cut through the noise and are sharp in writing (Slack, Notion, email) and confident in speech (area meetings, workshops)
What the job involves
- As an Operations Manager at Blank Street, you are the ultimate leader of an entire area of 5+ stores and the General Managers who lead them
- That means your greatest responsibility is growing people
- You will hire, coach and develop an A* team of GMs, helping them become confident leaders who build engaged, high-performing teams across our stores
- You are also the strategic mind behind your stores: you will own your area's PnL and decide how to plan, prioritize and follow through, so your stores get better day by day
- In a fast-moving and constantly evolving business, you will create clarity, build capability, and foster a culture of accountability, hospitality and continuous improvement
- You'll report to the Director of Operations and work closely with the rest of our Field Leadership team
- Together, you'll help scale the next generation of leaders while driving an exceptional experience for both our teams and our customers
- 1. Be Our Ultimate Hospitality Leader
- Make the standards stick: Coach your GMs to build the systems, behaviors and processes that keep our hospitality standards high every shift, whether you're in the store or not
- Hold the bar: Check standards across your area through regular store visits and data, and hold GMs accountable for closing gaps fast
- Jump in where it counts: Take an active role in turning around struggling stores and launching new stores in your area
- 2. Run a Tight PnL
- Plan for demand: Take quarterly sales forecasts from HQ, translate them store by store and make sure every GM knows what's coming (growth, slowdowns, seasonality, new openings nearby)
- Build the labor plan: Set labor targets a quarter out, including headcount and transfers between stores, and coach GMs to build rotas against them
- Calibrate inventory: Help GMs calibrate inventory to forecast demand, and set clear guardrails so no store is badly overstocked or running short
- 3. Build and Develop an A Team*
- Develop your GMs: Grow GMs into future leaders through our training pathways, regular 1:1s and direct feedback
- Own the talent pipeline: Calibrate hiring and promotion decisions across your area and set quarterly succession targets from barista to GM, so every store has its next leader ready
- Build an area-wide culture: Turn your stores into one team that shares what works and backs each other, with a culture that's distinctly Blank Street: fast-moving, high-energy, collaborative and fun
- 4. Operate Strategically
- Know your numbers inside out: Master your stores' KPIs and PnL, and set clear priorities for your area every week and every quarter
- Make sure every store has a plan: Work with each GM to build a plan for their store, then stay close as they carry it out and push the numbers in the right direction
- Land change and innovation: Roll out new initiatives across your area, from menu launches to tech tools. That means clear comms, hands-on training and real buy-in from your teams, then tracking adoption until it sticks
- Full Time: 50 hours per week, 5 days of availability required and must be available to work 2 peak days (usually weekend days, weekend as described as Friday, Saturday, Sunday)
Salary benchmarks
Our take
More people deserve great coffee and Blank Street strives to make this possible. Blank Street’s formula involves technology enabled, micro-footprint brick-and-mortar spaces which operate at a cheap price meaning they can produce excellent coffee, also, at a reasonable price.
What started as one electric-powered coffee cart in 2020 has expanded to over 90 locations across the US and the UK. Blank Street wants to serve coffee cheaper than Starbucks but tastier than Dunkin’ Donuts – its main competitors – and has done so with automation, specifically Eversys espresso makers that can produce 700 drinks an hour.
The chain has received mighty financing too, including from real estate tycoon Tishman Speyer as well as from General Catalyst Partners and Tiger Global Management. This brand is certainly making its mark as its growth has remained at an impressive rate, especially following its entrance into the thriving coffee shop market in the UK.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
11% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Mar 2023
$20m
EARLY VC
Oct 2021
$25m
SERIES A
Total funding: $52m
Company HQ
South Williamsburg, NY
Leadership
Issam Freiha
(Co-Founder & CEO)Issam co-founded Blank Street in 2020 alongside Vinay. Previously, he was a Partner at Reshape Ventures and Graduated from Columbia University with a BA in Economics & Statistics.
Vinay Menda
(Co-Founder & President)Vinay graduated from NYU Stern School of Business with a Bachelor's Degree in Finance in 2015. And he is currently a Managing Partner at Reshape Ventures.
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