About the role
We’ve grown quickly, and the owner’s business partner has retired. A lot in this kitchen still sits with him; the menu, the prep, the stock, the chippy counter, the paperwork, and he’s past capacity. We’re now building the team and systems to take Arlecchino forward, and that’s where this role comes in.
You would own the food, the operation and service. Our Head Chef works the sections and would be alongside you.
If you want to turn up, cook a shift and go home, this isn’t the job. It’s the menu, the margin, the ordering and the rota as well as the pass. On a Friday night you’re the one holding it together, and the rest of the week you’re the one deciding what we sell and what it costs us.
What you’ll own
Service. Calling the pass, the timing, the standard of what leaves the kitchen. Ours is a small team, so you’ll be cooking as well as running it.
The food. Weekly specials, new dishes, seasonal changes, costings. Our core family recipes are the reason people have come here for sixty years and those stay as they are, but everything built around them would be yours.
Prep. Planning it, organising it, and making sure the kitchen is set up properly before every service.
The chippy. Our takeaway counter and the team on it, including serving customers directly at peak. You’d be one of the first faces our customers see coming through the door.
Suppliers and ordering. Relationships, negotiation, ordering, deliveries, stock control.
Gross profit. Costings, waste, portion discipline and margin.
People and hours. Kitchen rotas, labour hours against sales, holiday and sickness cover, day‑to‑day organisation.
Systems. Most of what we do still runs on paper and on memory. Getting us onto proper systems; ordering, stock, rotas, food safety records, is part of this job, and it’s yours to shape. You won’t be inheriting someone else’s setup.
Opening and closing. The practical business of getting the doors open and shut properly.
What you’ll share
Compliance. Food safety records and hygiene documentation currently sit with the owner. You’d take this on gradually as you find your feet, and how it’s divided is something we’d work out between us rather than hand to you on day one.
Cooking is a real part of this job, roughly half to two thirds of your week. You need to hold your own on any station.
What we offer
£38,000 – £40,600 per year, depending on experience. Reviewed at twelve months.
Room to grow, and honesty about when. This salary reflects the job as described, taking enough off the owner’s plate to bring him from seventy hours a week down to fifty. That’s year one. Beyond that, as the structure you’ve built lets him step back further, the role gets bigger, and that’s the point at which the package gets revisited. We’d rather be straight about the sequence than vague about the promise.
48 hours a week and in a normal week you’ll have two consecutive days off. Holiday cover and the occasional stretch will mean that isn’t always possible.
28 days paid holiday including bank holidays.
Tips. The team run and share their own tips between them; the business isn’t involved. They’re consistently well above what’s typical for the area, and the team will tell you straight what that actually comes to when you meet them.
Free meals on shift, 40% staff discount, workplace pension.
What we’re looking for
We haven’t set minimum requirements. No fixed number of years, no particular CV. We think you’ll know from reading the above whether this is your job, but roughly, here’s what we have in mind.
Experience enough that running a kitchen holds no surprises. Head Chef, Sous Chef, Kitchen Manager, or a route we haven’t thought of.
Menu and costing ability. You can write a special, cost it properly, and make it work on a Tuesday as well as a Saturday.
Operational instinct. You enjoy the stock sheet, the supplier call and the rota as much as the cooking. This is a lot of the job.
Presence. You’d be an authority in this building. The person the team brings a rota clash or a difficult shift to, and the person who handles a customer complaint without it becoming an incident. That means calm, approachable and consistent, not loud.
All-round capability across stations. Italian experience is a real advantage. Chippy experience is welcome but we can teach it. What matters most is that you’re comfortable in a fast, demanding operation running several sections at once.
Comfort with customers. The chippy counter is public-facing. You’ll get to know our regulars, and they’ll get to know you.
The instinct to build systems. You don’t need to be technical. You need to be the sort of person who looks at a paper process and wants to fix it.
Clear communication in English with the team and with customers.
Who we are
We’ve been Arlecchino for sixty years this year, and the family has been feeding Greenock since 1921. We’re independent, family-run, and still on West Blackhall Street. Straightforward food done properly, Italian and chippy both, family recipes, no fuss, and generations of regulars who’d tell us quickly if that ever stopped being true.
The business is growing, quickly. Revenue is up significantly year on year, we’ve reinvested in the premises and in the team, and we’re opening on Sundays. This role is central to what happens next.
Where this goes
The owner isn’t stepping away from the business, but he is stepping back from doing everything in it. The immediate goal is getting him from seventy hours a week to fifty. The longer goal is the structure that lets him go further than that in a few years’ time, and that structure is what this role builds.
To be clear about the handover: he isn’t going anywhere. He’ll be working alongside you throughout, and the intention is that you take things on at the pace that makes sense rather than being handed the keys on day one.
This is a small independent business growing quickly, which means something specific: a capable person here can end up with considerably more responsibility, and considerably more say in how things are done, than the same person would in a chain.
How it works
An informal chat first, then a paid trial shift so you can meet the team and see the kitchen in action. Our Head Chef will be part of that, you’d be working closely together, and it’s as much about whether that works for you as for us.
Start date is flexible. We know good people have notice to work.
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