Head of Commercial and Operations

Founded in November 2018, Poke House is the global leader in the fast-casual poke bowl category. Positioned at the intersection of digital food experiences and modern restaurants, Poke House combines tech-driven innovation with operational excellence. With €120M in revenues in 2023 and a growing team of 1,000+ people, our hyper-growth is powered by strong unit economics, a scalable model, and a highly engaged community of poke lovers. 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.

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.

• Own and lead UK restaurant operations, ensuring strong performance across sales, food cost, labour cost, and customer experience.
• Oversee day-to-day operations across multiple locations, ensuring efficiency, quality, and compliance with UK food safety and hygiene regulations.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Deep, hands-on knowledge of UK food safety, hygiene and operational compliance (HACCP, health inspections, etc.).
• Ability to engage and inspire teams, building a high-performance, customer-centric culture.
• Proven success in vendor management, supply chain optimisation and inventory control.
• 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.

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.