Salary: Market-related salary, negotiable depending on experience

About atis: We’re a fast-growing food brand with big ambitions and bold ideas. Our mission is to bring real, nourishing, vibrant food to people in a way that feels fresh, modern and full of energy. We don’t do beige. We do colour, creativity, culture – and we’re building a brand that reflects that.

Every day, we make powerful food that’s full of flavour, full of colour and full of intention. Real food, done really well – all served fast, in vibrant spaces that move with the rhythm of city life. We’re here to transform people’s health and fuel better days. We are building a community that celebrates good food, good people and good energy – unapologetically.

About the role: As Culinary Operations Manager, you will be responsible for translating atis’ food vision into operational reality. This role ensures that product creativity works at scale, tastes as delicious as it did in the concept tasting, is executable across 16+ sites and is delivered consistently - while maintaining exceptional food safety, food quality standards and profitability. You will sit at the intersection of Product, Operations, Commercial and group Kitchen Management, acting as the ambassador for ensuring our food reaches customers smoothly, to exacting food safety standards, and extremely delicious.

Focus: Your focus is on turning great food ideas into flawless, scalable execution across the atis estate. You will ensure that every dish is delicious, consistent, safe and commercially sound. From early concept through to launch and live performance, you will stress-test, simplify and refine – protecting quality while embedding standards so that what lands in our kitchens works brilliantly in every site.

Typical Work Includes:

Operationalisation of all new menu items and collaboration launches
Partnering with Product on development and translating concepts into scalable, site-ready recipes
Stress testing menus for speed, complexity, waste, margin, and training load
For every new menu launch running kitchen trials, pilots & pre-launch validation
Creating recipe specs, build guides, prep flows, and equipment requirements
Ensuring flawless menu rollouts across the group
Being present in the site kitchens during seasonal & core menu launches
Setting & maintaining culinary standards across the estate
Running regular audits and taste panels
Owning corrective actions when standard slips
Ensuring all recipes, processes and specs are food-safe compliant, working closely with Ops on HACCP, allergen controls and EHO readiness
Embedding food safety as part of great food, not separate from it
Partnering with Product, Supply and Commercial on ingredients specs, yield optimisation and profitability, without compromising quality
Uplifting culinary capability across the business
Working with the L&D team to build and deliver simple but engaging training for the BOH teams
Coaching kitchen managers and leaders on standards, execution and compliance

Skills/Experience:

Experience in multi-site food businesses, ideally 8-30+ sites (QSR, fast casual, casual dining, premium cafe groups)
Experience working with fresh food, scratch-cooking, short shelf life product
Hands-on experience across various facets of the business; test kitchen, head office, service
Team player, used to working closely with Product Development, Ops, Supply Chain, and Commercial
Excellent palate and understanding of flavour balance
Strong understanding of all fundamental food safety and health and safety standards
Has personally delivered or heavily supported menu rollouts and major menu changes at scale
Has owned or heavily influenced recipe specs, guides, kitchen SOPs, launch playbooks
Experience opening new sites from a food readiness perspective
Comfortable working in businesses going through rapid growth
Understands GP, labour, throughput and waste management
Deeply quality-driven but operationally pragmatic
High standards, low ego
Obsessed with making things work, not just designing them
Experience coaching and upskilling kitchen leaders and teams

Mindset: You’re obsessed with making things better, not just acceptable. Naturally proactive, you spot issues before they escalate and take full ownership of the process end-to-end. You are commercially curious, not purely culinary, demonstrating a balanced perspective that marries food excellence with business reality. A pragmatic idealist, you care deeply about food whilst accepting the constraints of what is operationally possible. You value consistency as much as creativity and you thrive at the centre of things - collaborating across teams.You like to be in the middle of things, not operating in a silo.

Why atis:

We’re building a bold, flavour-first brand that is shaking things up in the food space
You’ll have creative freedom and real ownership of your work
Work with a growing, ambitious team that cares deeply about food and people
We move quickly, trust generously and love big ideas
Lots of real, bold food to fuel your ideas

What we offer you:

Prime central London office location
Dog-friendly office
Weekly travel card Zones 1-2
Annual salary reviews
25 paid holiday days + 8 days bank holidays
Paid day of community/charity work – 1 day per year
Working From Away (WFA) - 1 week per year working from away after a minimum tenure of 1 year service
Sabbatical - a sabbatical of 4 weeks after 3 years of service
Cycle to Work scheme
Employee Assistance Program
Pension scheme (3% employer contribution + 5% employee contribution)
Frequent social events, head office and company-wide
Free atis for lunch or dinner
Discount codes for friends and family
Free atis merchandise (cap; tee; tote)
High-performing, focused, caring office working environment with promise for growth professionally and personally
Investment in professional training and development
iMac Desktop or laptop for field-based roles