Head of Operations UK in City of London

Founded in November 2018, Poke House is the global leader in the fast-casual poke bowl category. Today, we operate 180+ locations across nine countries, with additional markets soon to follow. Positioned at the intersection of digital food experiences and modern restaurants, Poke House combines tech-driven innovation with operational excellence. To further strengthen our UK presence, we are looking for a Head of Operations UK to join our leadership team and play a key role in driving operational excellence and sustainable growth across the country.

Joining Poke House means more than taking on a new role — it means helping to build something meaningful. As Head of Operations UK, you will report into the UK Country Manager acting as the operational leader for the UK market, owning end-to-end restaurant operations. We are looking for a hands-on, data-driven leader with a strong operational mindset, able to scale processes, develop people, and ensure consistent execution in a fast-growing environment.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Own and lead UK restaurant operations, ensuring strong performance across sales, food cost, labour cost, and customer experience.
• Manage and collaborate closely with the Store Managers to drive operational results and execution excellence.
• Oversee day-to-day operations across multiple locations, ensuring efficiency, quality, and compliance with UK food safety and hygiene regulations.
• Develop, implement and continuously improve operational processes to increase productivity, reduce costs and support scalability.
• Ensure optimal workforce planning, shift scheduling, training and development to maintain high service and performance standards.
• Monitor and optimize operational expenses, ensuring profitability in line with company financial targets.
• Ensure optimal stock management, minimizing waste and preventing shortages.
• Work closely with the Ops Standard Excellence team by guaranteeing a consistent and excellent customer experience across all UK locations, addressing issues and complaints promptly.
• Leverage operational KPIs and data to assess performance, identify gaps and implement corrective actions.
• Ensure full compliance with UK health & safety, food regulations, and employment laws, as well as internal company policies.
• Engage, motivate and develop teams, fostering a culture of accountability, ownership and continuous improvement.
• Coach and mentor managers to strengthen leadership capabilities and operational maturity.
• Support the rollout of digital solutions (e.g. kiosks, operational dashboards, KPI tools).
• Adapt HQ initiatives (e.g. menu reviews, brand standards) to local UK market needs, ensuring alignment and execution.
• Provide regular performance updates to the Country Manager and HQ team.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Marketing, Product, Finance, HR and Ops Standard Excellence.
• Supervise and support franchisees to ensure compliance with brand and operational standards (if applicable).

Requirements:

• 7+ years of experience in operations within the food retail, QSR or hospitality industry.
• Proven track record managing multi-site operations in a fast-paced food retail or QSR environment.
• Strong experience operating in the UK market; international exposure is a strong plus.
• Deep, hands-on knowledge of UK food safety, hygiene and operational compliance (HACCP, health inspections, etc.).
• Solid expertise in budget management, labour optimisation and cost control.
• Strong people leadership skills, with extensive experience leading, mentoring and developing managers and teams.
• Ability to engage and inspire teams, building a high-performance, customer-centric culture.
• Proven success in vendor management, supply chain optimisation and inventory control.
• Experience driving process standardisation and operational best practices at scale.
• Strong customer mindset, with experience managing service quality and customer feedback.
• Familiarity with POS systems, restaurant management tools and data analytics platforms.
• Fluent English (C1 level preferred); other European languages such as Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese are considered a plus.

What We Offer:

• A strong company culture and an ambitious, collaborative leadership team.
• Permanent contract with a competitive compensation package aligned with experience.
• Significant career growth opportunities within a fast-scaling international group.