Regional Restaurant Coach - North - #1796812

We have an exciting opportunity for a Regional Restaurant Coach - North to join our Restaurant team working field based in our North region covering Scotland and Northern England, with regular travel to our Central Support Office in Lasswade.

The Regional Restaurant Coach will focus daily on driving performance across customer experience, team development, sales growth, and cost control — all through the consistent delivery of brand standards and the development of high-performing store teams. Working closely with the Head of Restaurant Operations, Centre Support Team and Regional Manager supporting them in the execution of the operational strategy across the Region.

Responsibilities

Operational leadership and compliance:

• Drives high standards across all restaurant operations — from food safety and compliance to customer experience
• Executes company strategies efficiently and adapts to individual restaurant needs
• Ensure all day-to-day operational processes are compliant, efficient and continuously improving across the region
• Ensures restaurant teams meet all legal, food safety and brand requirements – via regular store visits, audit checks and team coaching
• Supports successful delivery of new store openings and seasonal transitions
• Support the creation and execution of operational designs by restaurant format that optimise the experience and productivity
  
  

Commercial and strategic delivery:

• Review monthly performance data against targets, identify gaps and work with the Head of Restaurant Operations and Regional Manager to implement action plans
• Focus on by restaurant, within the region, profitability through margin control, cost and waste management, and sales-driving initiatives
• Support the delivery of the deployment model and labour hours control to protect profit and maximise the contribution flowthrough.
• Uses data and KPIs to guide decisions and prioritise actions for maximum impact
• Ensures store colleagues understand the link between service excellence and commercial success
• Support the implementation of sales and marketing activity to drive revenue and brand engagement
  
  

Leadership

• Coaches with empathy and clarity; supports individuals to grow while holding them accountable
• Adapts leadership style to suit different personalities and challenges
• Builds trust, motivates teams, and champions a high-performance culture
• Delivers clear, actionable feedback to drive improvement and ownership
• Strong communicator who can influence across multiple levels of the business
• Collaborates cross-functionally with General Managers, Support Teams, and Suppliers
• Acts as a conduit for sharing best practices and operational insight
  
  

Brand standards and values:

• Promotes our company values through all internal and external relationships
• Ensures all our operational partners meet our ethical and brand standards
  
  

Measures of success

• NPS: YOY growth of company performance delivered by strong operational processes
• EBITDA: YOY growth of bottom-line profit through efficient operational mechanisms
• Audit: Maintains strong operational controls enabling strong store and company audits performance
• Waste and Food Cost: Ensures operational process support effective cost and waste management controls
• Performance feedback: Strong manager and key stakeholder feedback
• Gross Margin: Support delivery of healthy gross margin within all supplier arrangements and operational processes
  
  

Who We Are Looking For

• Collaboration: Effective collaborator across key stakeholders, informing and empowering other departments to support delivery of Restaurant strategy
• Commerciality: Ensures commercial thinking in the design and delivery of all operational processes. Maintaining a robust approach to protect the business from risk factors.
• Communication: Effective communicator across all relationships, presenting clear and well thought out business presentations
• Influence: Able to influence colleagues of all levels across the business with clearly articulated strategy.
• Personal effectiveness: Methodical, organised and data driven in approach
• Values led behaviour: Acts as an example of our values in all interactions
  
  

What We Offer

• Holiday – enjoy a well deserved break with 33 annual leave days per year (pro-rata for part time)
• Discount – treat yourself with generous uncapped discount across our stores with 50% off in our Restaurants, 25% off in the Garden Centre and 10% off in our food halls
• Pension – save for the future with our company contributed enhanced Group Pension Plan
• Season ticket loans – spread the cost of travel with an interest free loan
• Access to Wagestream – support your financial wellbeing, with ability to access earnings ahead of pay day, save for the future and financial advice
• Access to Retail Trust – seek confidential support, access to a Virtual GP, free counselling service and discounted retail rewards with our employee wellbeing platform
• Access to Dobbies Academy – continue your development with our eLearning platform and development programmes
• Study assistance – invest in your professional development with funded courses and qualifications
• The little things to keep you going through the day – free tea, coffee, and milk
• Collaborative office space – with access to our wellbeing room, learning resources and even a book swap
• Invites to our annual company conference, summer and Christmas social events
  
  

About Us

At Dobbies, we’re proud to have a history dating back to 1865. We were founded by James Dobbie and are the only garden centre retailer to have stores in every nation across the UK.

Our passion and joy for gardens and plants is what makes us special. In our stores, we showcase this through own brand and branded products, concession partners and services. We champion garden living all-year-round.

Many of our stores feature a restaurant or coffee shop, where customers can enjoy refreshments or meals in a relaxed and welcoming environment.

We offer a calendar of events and experiences that bring people and communities together, and we have a national charity partner that both our colleagues and customers raise money for,

We’re committed to being a great place to work. We’re one team and we encourage our colleagues to be the best version of themselves, every day; to share their wins and celebrate success. Together, we make it work for our customers.