Head of Operations UK

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 (Italy, UK, Spain, France, Portugal, Austria, Belgium, Romania and the US). 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.

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 regulations.

Requirements:

• 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.