Job description
Wholly Greens is seeking a Central Kitchen Operations Manager to lead Shake Salad's central kitchen operations. This hands-on, results-driven leadership role focuses on food safety, production efficiency, and daily fulfilment across multiple channels. You will design and enforce robust SOPs, optimise production workflows, and ensure on-time, high-quality product delivery.
In this role, you will collaborate with procurement, quality assurance, and logistics to align demand with capacity, manage inventory, and drive continuous improvement. You will mentor kitchen staff, champion safety, and ensure compliance with HACCP and GMP standards. If you thrive in a fast-paced, scale-up environment and have a passion for fresh, healthy food, this is your opportunity to make a measurable impact.
Join Wholly Greens to help deliver delicious, safe products to customers with reliability and care. This position offers growth, leadership exposure, and the chance to shape a pivotal part of our operations.
Responsibility
- Lead the end-to-end central kitchen operations for Shake Salad, ensuring food safety, production efficiency, and on-time fulfillment.
- Develop and implement standard operating procedures for production planning, batching, cooking, portioning, and packaging.
- Oversee daily production scheduling, capacity planning, and manpower allocation to meet demand and minimize downtime.
- Maintain rigorous food safety programs, manage QA inspections, audits, and corrective actions in accordance with HACCP and GMP.
- Optimize inventory management, supplier coordination, waste reduction, and cost control while safeguarding quality.
- Mentor, train, and develop kitchen staff; promote a safe, inclusive, and high-performance work environment.
- Collaborate with procurement, quality assurance, and logistics to forecast demand and ensure reliable delivery across channels.
- Monitor KPI dashboards, drive continuous improvement initiatives, and report performance to leadership.
Qualification
- Bachelor's degree in Food Science, Operations, Supply Chain, Business, or a related field, or equivalent hands-on experience.
- 5+ years in kitchen or food manufacturing operations with prior leadership responsibilities.
- Strong knowledge of HACCP, GMP, and applicable food safety standards; experience with audits.
- Proficiency in production planning, inventory management, and ERP systems (e.g., SAP, Oracle) or equivalent tools.
- Excellent leadership, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills; ability to build and develop teams.
- Analytical mindset with data-driven approach to drive efficiency, waste reduction, and cost control.
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, scale-up environment; hands-on operator with a proactive problem-solving mindset.