Executive Chef & Hospitality Manager in Stoke-on-Trent

Executive Chef & Hospitality Manager

Lichfield Street | Full Time | 39 hours per week | Permanent

This is an opportunity to shape something special.

At Emma Bridgewater, hospitality is about much more than serving great food. It is part of the experience of visiting our world — a chance to welcome people, surprise them, create memories and bring our creativity, craft and personality to life.

We are looking for an Executive Chef & Hospitality Manager to lead the next chapter of our café and wider hospitality offer.

This is a pivotal role at an exciting point in our journey. You will have the opportunity to raise standards, shape the food and hospitality experience, develop a brilliant team and play a key role in projects that will take our visitor centre to the next level.

We are looking for someone who is excited by that challenge.

The opportunity

You will lead both the kitchen and front-of-house operation, reporting to our Head of Retail and working as part of the senior retail leadership team.

You will be the culinary leader, hospitality expert and commercial driver for the operation — combining creativity and ambition with the operational discipline needed to deliver an exceptional visitor experience every day.

You will have genuine influence over what we do next.

From developing seasonal British menus and memorable afternoon teas, to creating experiences for private dining, corporate hospitality, events and VIP visits, you will help define what outstanding hospitality looks like at Emma Bridgewater.

You will also contribute to future hospitality development and investment projects, helping us rethink our offer, our spaces and the way we welcome visitors.

This is a hands-on leadership role. We want a chef who loves being in the kitchen, who can lead a busy service with confidence and who is equally comfortable stepping back to look at the bigger commercial and strategic picture.

What we're looking for

You will be an experienced senior chef and hospitality leader who combines:

• Exceptional culinary standards and a genuine passion for great food.
• The confidence and credibility to lead a busy, high-volume kitchen.
• Experience developing seasonal menus and commercially successful food concepts.
• Strong commercial understanding, including food cost, gross profit, labour, purchasing and budgets.
• A track record of building, coaching and retaining great hospitality teams.
• Experience leading both kitchen and customer-facing hospitality operations.
• A passion for seasonal British food, local produce and responsible sourcing.
• The ability to create consistently excellent experiences while maintaining pace, efficiency and profitability.
• The confidence to challenge the status quo and find better ways of doing things.
• Excellent food safety, HACCP and compliance knowledge.
• The personality to work collaboratively across Retail, Marketing, Visitor Experience and the wider business.

You might currently be an Executive Chef, Head Chef or Senior Sous Chef looking for a bigger opportunity. You may already have experience within a visitor attraction, destination hospitality business, premium café, artisan bakery, heritage venue or another high-volume environment.

What matters most is that you have the ambition, leadership capability and culinary credibility to take our hospitality offer forward.

Experience of hospitality events, afternoon tea, private dining, corporate hospitality or transformation projects would be particularly valuable.

What you'll be responsible for

Raise the culinary standard

Lead the development of a distinctive food offer that reflects Emma Bridgewater — creative, seasonal, beautifully presented and rooted in quality.

You'll oversee menus across café service, afternoon tea, children's dining, coach parties, private dining, corporate hospitality, events and seasonal experiences.

You'll establish recipes, specifications and standards that deliver consistency without losing creativity.

And when service gets busy, you'll be right there with your team.

Build an exceptional hospitality team

You will lead and develop our Front of House Manager, Sous Chef, Chefs and Kitchen Assistants.

You'll create a culture where people take pride in what they do, where front and back of house work as one team, and where everyone understands what great hospitality looks like.

You'll recruit well, coach generously and set high standards — developing people so they can grow with the business.

Make hospitality commercially brilliant

Great food and great hospitality need to make commercial sense.

You'll own agreed sales, revenue, profit and budget targets, with a focus on maintaining a minimum 65% food gross profit.

You'll use forecasting, menu engineering, purchasing, stock control, portion control and labour planning to improve performance and reduce waste.

You'll understand the numbers — and know how to turn them into action.

Create memorable visitor experiences

You'll help make our café a destination in its own right and an important part of the wider Emma Bridgewater visitor experience.

You'll work with colleagues across the business to create experiences, events and campaigns that give people another reason to visit, stay longer, spend more and come back.

Above all, you'll make sure our visitors receive warm, memorable hospitality that feels unmistakably Emma Bridgewater.

Lead standards and compliance

You will take overall responsibility for food safety, HACCP, allergens, COSHH, Trading Standards and Health & Safety within the hospitality operation.

You'll lead from the front on standards, ensuring we maintain a Food Hygiene Rating of 5 and build a culture where safety, cleanliness and professionalism are non-negotiable.

And importantly — your working hours

We know hospitality has a reputation for demanding hours. That's not how we want this role to work.

This is a 39-hour-per-week, five-days-over-seven role.

We want you to be able to do an excellent job within those contracted hours. There are no expectations of routinely working additional, unpaid or "hidden" hours.

Where additional hours are genuinely required and agreed in advance, they will be paid.

We believe in being clear about expectations and respectful of people's time. We want someone to join us for the opportunity, the people, the creativity and the challenge — not because they are expected to give up their life outside work.

Why Emma Bridgewater?

We're a British brand with a big personality, a love of creativity and a very human approach to business.

Our pottery is made with care and character, and we want the same spirit to run through the experiences we create for our visitors.

You'll join a business where individuality is encouraged, ideas are welcomed and people matter.

You'll also have access to Emma Bridgewater employee discounts and product benefits, alongside wellbeing and employee support designed to help our people thrive at work and beyond.

Most importantly, you'll have the opportunity to make a genuine difference.

This isn't about maintaining the hospitality operation we've got. It's about helping us create the hospitality operation we want to become.

If you're an ambitious chef and hospitality leader who wants the opportunity to raise standards, develop people, shape a distinctive food offer and play a meaningful role in the future of an iconic British brand, we'd love to hear from you.

Come and help us make something wonderful.